Thursday Nights Figure Class .... Disaster

 Have you ever just wanted to shake things up and try a new surface to paint on? I had heard about Sherwin Williams Alkyd Primer as a good and reliable base to paint on so I purchased a quart just the other day. I decided to apply a coat to a panel as well as a linen canvas. It dried to the touch within an hour as the directions stated and it seemed fine and ready to paint on. So off I went to S12 to paint a figure.

 The first 30 minutes were great and the paint seemed to flow well. But into the first hour the paint was noticeably being sucked into the primer. Well I thought, maybe I should add a little linseed oil and maybe that should slow down the absorption rate of the canvas. It did not work. The painting was starting to dry ( we are talking oils here ) in the 3 hr time frame. It was amazing. I can't recall when I have been so frustrated with my " tools " . Well maybe I can....like when I was in Art school. But this was ridiculous. Nothing seemed to work and I could not control what I wanted to accomplish. The surface was fighting me at every brush stroke. So I quit a bit early and hoped I could possibly rescue it at home but when I set the canvas on my easel the background was ALREADY DRY. Amazing.

 What also made the evening frustrating was that I really liked the pose and I was orchestrating a colorist approach. I did a minimal amount of drawing and blocked in a color chord that I found appealing . But as the night progressed it was like going to a dance with your dream date and slipping and falling and breaking your leg after you drank some punch.

 So , the next day after I taught at Lincoln Hills , I went back into the painting to see if it just needed to dry before I added another coat. But it was all for naught. The surface was like a sponge.

 Did I do something wrong here? Hmmmm. I started to scrap off the surface of the second attempt but I stopped and photographed it as reminder of good intentions gone bad. A Catcher on the Dry .

 I tried another quick sketch on the panel yesterday and today it's already dry! It absorbs way too fast for my taste and my alla prima approach....anybody want a barely used quart of Sherwin Williams Alkyd Primer?


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Luckily , I had a place to vent as I told my Friday Class about my misadventure. I taught the students about keeping the light consistant throughout the painting. The shadows and the light have to feel like they are coming from the same light source.

 I could not help myself and I painted a little portrait sketch of Jim Brunk who was painting a real beauty yesterday. I just lusted at all his cool Silver and Robert Simmons Brushes. Its like looking at a golfer with the best clubs. It may not help you be a better artist but in the end you can't blame the brushes!