Log from the scary studio #2
Layers of magenta, mixing an electric green, and finishing touches
Hello friends, welcome to my studio.
It’s raining here in St. John’s today, with a grey sky that is more typical of our Spring and a downpour that our newly (and maybe a bit prematurely) planted annuals likely enjoyed.
It’s a bit chilly in the studio so I have a little space heater on. Kingsley is upstairs with my husband Kieran, uninterested in my studio work today. I’ve made a bit of progress since the last log, and now it’s time for finishing touches for the big painting, which is both a very fun and very scary part because each stroke matters and there aren’t any do-overs like there can be in the earlier layers.
I start the session with a phone call to my sister while I paint a vibrant magenta on the smaller of my two works in progress, and when we’re all chatted out I switch to an audiobook for my book club, The Inheritance Games. We are a very unserious book club, (well, we’re serious about our meetings but we love a cheesy book to trash talk) and this is a fun read so far, with a mystery and some classic YA angst. I get most of my books from the library app Libby, and I only have a few days before this loan runs out which is very motivating to finish the book.
Next I move over to the big painting and prepare to do a little paint stroke. These fun marks are a new addition to this series of quilt paintings I’m trying. The last few works I did without them just felt a little unfinished, too clean and predictable. But like a hand quilter lets some wonky stitching contrast with clean, machine-sewed patches, I’m adding a top layer of mark making to this painting to see how it feels. I like to do a practice stroke on a piece of paper to warm up my hand and test out the colour combination before I do it on the panel, because like I said, it’s a one and done mark (the most scary kind). This little blob is blue and green, and has a satisfying s-shaped curve.
Kingsley bounds in and puts his paws on my knees for some scritches. I dutifully oblige and he pads back upstairs, quest fulfilled. Another coat of the magenta goes down, and I swipe the brush in a different direction than the first layers so the strokes lay more evenly. I remember to do a swatch of the colour in my sketchbook this time. Future Emily is going to thank me for that someday.
My current favourite way to store mixed paint colours is in these little paint bottles I got from Michaels. I think they’re for tole painting, but they’re perfect for Golden’s fluid acrylic line. I can take my primaries and secondaries and make exactly the colour I’m looking for right in the bottle, and then when I want a new colour in my next painting I just add some fresh paint (a little bit of colour mixing practice really helps here), shake, and swatch the new hue right over the old one on the top of the lid. Because I’m constantly turning one colour into another, I rarely make a new one from scratch so mixing this bright, electric green was a real treat today.
It’s time for clean paint water. Ugh, will the drudgery never end?
I take a bottle of bubblegum pink paint and shift it in its bottle with some quinacridone magenta. If I had to choose only a few colours to keep purchasing forever, this pigment powerhouse would be one of them. It’s an essential blue-leaning red that is crucial for colour mixing, with a vibrancy that many other pinks just can’t match (though I’m always on the hunt, if you have another favourite magenta, I’d love to hear it!). I trace this new pink around the folded corner of the quilt carefully, painfully slowly, and let out a breath of relief when its done.
Another layer of magenta on the smaller painting. I might get away with three coats this time.
Kingsley has come back to the studio and curled up in the bed beneath my desk, content to watch me work for a while.
The next swoop on the big painting is a combination of Easter egg yellow and pink, a soft pastel on top of a dark, forest green. I think the magic of putting colours side by side is one of the main reasons I choose to paint, instead of draw with a pencil or sculpt with a natural clay. The subject matter I choose is really just a vehicle for the colour palette, like a fry is a vehicle for ketchup.
The third layer was enough, and it was time to pull the tape from the magenta. Not a single leak, and each reveal was satisfying.
Now its time to tape out the next colour, which will be a saturated blue. While I start masking, I have a video call with Natalie. This kind of work is the best for multitasking because it’s repetitive and mostly mindless, so we’re able to catch up on all of our weekly updates while I lay, cut, and seal each piece of tape. The medium takes a long time to dry fully, so I put it aside for the night and turn back to the big painting for the finishing stroke: a thin, deep purple that follows the inside quilt edge. I use a fine liner bottle for this, which is fun because this tool is new to me and I’m still figuring it out. The lines it makes are satisfyingly thin, if a little wobbly from my lack of practice with it. Once it’s done, I say goodnight to Natalie and my paintings and shut down the studio for another day. That wasn’t so scary, now was it?
Happy Art Making,
Em 💕
www.emilypittman.ca
www.studiomates.ca
Read More:
Today I mixed a bluish colour 💙
Social media is really overwhelming these days. Here’s a slow, unedited, too long video of me mixing a paint colour to work through my creative block.