Desert sand shines in the sun, sweat runs down my neck

Next step in the adventure is getting rid of the latex. Once the background’s first layer is dry, all the covered areas are cleared up. Now, anything can happen. Therefore it is one of the most exciting moments of painting.

Young Indy now is ready to continue the adventurous joyride through the excavation site. There I grab my brushes and begin discovering the hidden treasures – their shapes and colors. The glittering pieces in the left corner of the "excavation site" are glitter in 3 colors: champagne, yellow gold, and bits of fine copper. I powdered it all over the paper when the background was still wet. The sparkles add more treasurelike effect. It is as if I was at some ancient site and desert sand shone in the midday sun. In the heat coming from the blue sky above me, I wipe the sweat off my face and neck. I am now ready to move on to discovering the barley's hidden textures. 

A few reflections on Photoshop and its magic

Being a detail freak and sometimes an artist using some devices to enhance photos, the growing number of “photoshop gone bad” pictures cannot escape my notice. We are not perfect, it is a fact I do not deny, but for God’s sake – use it properly! Photoshop and similar programs can really help – when a pimple decides to spoil the cute shot, your eyes get the red devil pupils during a flash photo session, teeth are not as bright as in real life, a fly passes by and half of your sexy lips are smudged. These are good and necessary adjustments, to name just these few, so you know what I mean. But when someone decides to use it to literally put a mask on her/his face? The effect used by those “individuals” is called “skin softening” or similar, depending on the software used. Look at the example pictures of Wael Kfoury and Clive Owen before and after: 

Does it really look appealing to you? To me it does not! First of all, as you can see, it was completely unnecessary in these cases! Skin does not look like that! Look at your skin! Look at its structure! This is where beauty lies – in different structure! People created complicated 3D software to reflect this very same structure you are destroying with one click of your mouse! You are not a shop window mannequin! You are a human being! I just cannot stand looking at that kind of pictures any more. They literally hurt my eyes! Many fanpages use that kind of pictures. And not only them, they are everywhere including magazine covers!    

Archeaologist's adventures continue

When the initial shapes of the hidden treasure emerge from the sand's surface, they send an invitation for more exploration. Even though they are very tempting, they have to wait and be secured first, so that I could work on the background. This is the moment when artists' masking latex comes in handy. The smell is really terrible (like old unwashed socks sprayed with some unknown chemical substance), but what could adventurous Amy do? Fortunately the smell is around only till it dries.

When the stinky latex dries all the fun begins! The Three Musketeers enter and I let them do their job. First, I apply some water and then the gouache. This is a painting that is going to portray summer and poppies among the barley, so I will not use that much of black color as I usually do. I want it to look light and sunny. I also like to apply some glitter to make it shiny and salt to add structure. Salt does not work so nicely with gouaches as with watercolors, simply because they are very thick, as I wrote in my first entry, but still, it adds some interesting effects. Sometimes they are new formed crystals, and sometimes just stains. 

As the professionals probably will notice, the paper was not put in water and stretched before painting. I like to use the "mountains" of curved surface to accumulate more paint and get darker areas this way. 

There we go - background ready to dry. Archaeologist is now really excited and cannot wait till tomorrow!

New beginnings - hidden treasure

Each painting begins with a blank space - canvas, paper, or other surface. I like to compare it to ground under which there are hidden treasures.

When I paint or draw, I become an archaeologist and slowly dig out what was covered with sand. Each stroke and each line take me closer to that miraculous discovery. The sand's surface is even, tangible, ready to be disturbed. First comes the pencil and helps in finding contours of the treasure. Its moves are rather insecure, as if it was afraid of waking up some bad spirits of the past.