In Sequence, B Side

Rarely do I paint on the back of another painting, on advice of my mother who realized that you may want to sell a painting one day and couldn't separate the back from the front. This painting was done on the B side of 'Perpetual Load Theory (The 2012 Question)'. I really didn't think Perpetual Load Theory was going to work out, and in fact abandoned the work by taking it off the stretching rack. At the same time I found a missing note-book in a drawer which had doodles done between 2011-2012. These doodles were earlier than the ones I had been using, and I wanted to keep things in chronological order, hence the name of the painting. The title also refers to the DNA strands that are saving (or drowning?) the character in the middle foreground- all DNA has a series of molecules, the 'sequence' of which determines life. After some time I realized that Perpetual Load Theory was actually ok, and finished it too (previous post).

Another first for this painting was the underwater scene in the front. I made the effect by copying the doodles from my notebooks using a squiggly line technique... just shake your hand a little as you draw. Then I filled in base colours using pale washes, and after drying, I overlaid the blue green water. Finally I put on the darker blue smears to create the light/shadow of waves. It seemed to work out pretty good- click on the painting to see an enlarged view.

There is also a very experimental technique in this work... you see the pillar of yellow fire in the top middle background emanating from what looks like a flower vase? That was done using a triple backwash technique. A backwash is when a wet layer of paint bleeds into a medium-dry layer of paint, creating a fuzzy jagged edge. Typically backwashes happen by accident in watercolour where you least want them, but over the years I learned to control them. To make the pillar of fire, I laid down the neutral blue sky, and when it was about half dry I dropped down a moist layer of yellow... when that was half dry, I dropped down a moist layer of yellow-orange on the yellow layer...when that was half dry I dropped down a moist layer of red-orange.The element is fairly unimportant in the overall scheme, but maybe I'll use this technique in the future.

22x30" cold press (B side) June 2013