I've got a crazy busy summer booked for my adopt a robot series. I also have a bunch of other canvases I want to tackle, but this weekend is dedicated to my fresh, shiny stack of 150 new adopt a robot canvases. I finished all the base coats yesterday. I can't start with a white canvas - I have to make it less precious by making it a color first - this batch: wheat bread...haha...I like something neutral/bland in the tan/grey range generally.
I started working on the backgrounds out on the terrace yesterday. Once I realized that electrical cords and walking through pooling water was a bad idea and that my flashlight just wasn't enough, I called it quits for the night. I popped up at 6:30am excited to get back to it! With some fresh eyes today, I've got a few with which I'm satisfied, a ton still in process, and a bunch I haven't even started yet. It's going to be an awesome weekend...
It just feels good to paint. I know that some would say that just splashing water and ink around isn't painting, but there are an infinite number of decisions in the process - straight ink? add water? how much water? how should I distribute it? eyedropper? splash? pour? is that enough? more? should I let that run off or move it so it pools there? how long should I wait until I do more? until it's totally dry? until it's almost dry? should I let a new color mix in with it? what color is next? should I leave it right there like or move it so it pours and pools differently? what does it need? on and on and on with each new color... until you reach more sets of questions... is this done? does it need more blue? more red? yellow? orange? does it need a light thin wash of it or maybe something more bold? should I stop? how will it look if I keep going? is it really done? if I add more is it going to muddy it up? am I just going to muddle it up? shit. done? not done? done? hmm... I love the game. It's challenging. It's frustrating. I love what I can achieve without physically touching the canvas too - what all those little (or BIG) bits of science can do - surface tension, capillary action, evaporation, and so on... Sometimes I make what I think are incredibly beautiful backgrounds. Some are so beautiful to me that I don't even want to put an image on them - they are perfect just as they are. Other times I totally fuck them up. They look awful. I wonder and gamble with whether to keep throwing more shit at them or just stopping and hoping that the foreground image will distract or hide how awful it is. Other times there's no salvaging it. I wonder if I should just throw more base coat on and keep going or if at some point something will spark and I'll see what's going on in it to be able to fix it. It's a beautiful process. In so many ways it's so much more difficult than the actual robot part. It's also really interesting to monitor my attachment and attentiveness to it - some days I'm really focused and super critical, other days I'm just having fun and going along with whatever happens. I love it. And even when I'm super frustrated with it and it's just not working, somewhere deep beneath the grr, I'm still loving it.
If you're not familiar with my work, my adopt a robot series, or my backgrounds, please check out my website: ezerdland
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