Mother Mary 2… Tribal Mary
For the gypsy parts of myself I wanted to take the original Mother Mary that I wrote about in the previous post, and make her bliss out in tribal dress. Love, love, love her.
However, I did not love painting on this surface. It was new to me and it seemed like a brilliant idea. I got everything all sketched in and started painting only to find my face contorting rather quickly. It is Fredrix 100% Cotton Canvas for water based paints. Watercolor. It doesn’t absorb much at all. I invested myself further, thinking that maybe I was just long on the learning curve with this material. Nope. It just sucks for watercolor. All of my pigments move around on the surface. AFTER they’ve dried. Not just a little, a lot. As in, layering colors has to happen ever so gingerly. I found myself accidentally wiping off one color when I was applying the next. Then, I learned that I’d have to basically be okay with mixing my wet paint with my dried paint… assuming what color would come out of it at the end. Frustrating mess. I also didn’t like the ‘whiteness’ of the canvas showing through. No matter how many layers I put on her skin she never got the luminous glow that my other version of her had. And that is preciscely because the color would keep wicking off of the surface with every new brush stroke and I had to mooosh it all around.
All of that said, I am satisfied with the result for what I was able to do with the substrate. I would like to play with the image in Corel Paint and see if I can digitally add the layers I imagined her having. I will do a future update and link it here when I get that done.
