Altered Ending

This painting is an example of what I might now consider a 'classic' doodleism style... The painting which was done recently resembles a lot the earlier ones I was doing, in particular, it has an overall 2-D feel to it at first glance, but on closer inspection there is a depth-of-field suggested by the river and the landscape. Sitting in the foreground towards the bottom right, a group of cave men huddle around a fire, behind them there is a row of alien looking pods on a ridge line. The rest of the picture is filled with random elements all taken from notebook doodles. I though the title Altered Ending had something to do with the fact that aliens had somehow landed in our caveman past, and would in that case lead to an altered ending.

I don't know if I ever blogged about the methods for stretching paper ...one day not long after I started painting my parents took me to see the studio of a famous watercolour painter in Ontario named John Joy... he told me how to stretch paper using water and staples and showed me a large piece of wood that he had stretched paper on. So I went home and figured out how to do it, basically you fill the bath tub with cold water, then submerge your paper, it usually floats a bit so I flip it after about 10 minutes. Before doing this I cut the paper to the required size, lately I have been using just 22x30 or 22x15. Also, before hand, clean off a table somewhere, and wipe it down a bit to make sure there is no paint blobs there, and get a lint free rag ready (you can buy them in the painting section of a hardware store. For stretching you need a heavy piece of wood, I use an old keyboard support board from a desk I used to have, it happens to be just over 22x15, and for 22x30 I built a sturdy square from 1x4" pine. If you are wondering why the size... it is because watercolour paper is always sold in 22x30" pages. After a total of about 20 min, pull out the paper and let it drip, just grab it by a corner or edge. Bring it to the desk, and put it down flat, wipe off the excess water with the lint free rag, pick it up, wipe excess water off desk, then put flat, wipe off excess from the other side. Now the tricky part is to figure out which side is up... the top side is slightly smoother than the bottom, you can also tell because the manufacturer prints their name on the corner, it is only really visible on the back side (they dont want their name appearing in the art after all). Now put the paper on your surface or rack and using a staple gun put in stables, start with one side middle, then gently pull the other side taut so the paper is flat, staple the other side middle, then do the same for the third and fourth side. Now do corners and then a few in between. Generally about 1 staple every 4 inches is enough, if you put too many in you will be hauling them out afterward (which I do carefully with needle nose pliers). The staples need to be about half inch (1cm) from the edge of the paper, or else the rip when the paper dries. Let dry flat overnight. I always stretch paper except for 5x7" paintings.

Altered Ending, 11 x 15" cold press, watercolour, 2010 (No. 1762a)