It won’t be unkind to myself if I say I am messy. Very messy. My study cum studio has towering, precarious piles of books and magazines, knotty stashes of ribbons, bursting folders crammed full of ephemera, and boxes and pieces of papers everywhere. It is partly because I never throw away anything, partly because I can’t be bothered to tidy up when my spare time is so limited and partly because I thrive on mess. Stumbling upon an old postcard or a scrap of paper fires up my creative juices.
So it really really galls me that I can’t transfer this messy approach to painting backgrounds. When I paint backgrounds they are usually too formal, too rigid, too—dare I say it?—contrived.
I have long been admiring the loose, free, no holds barred approach to background painting of people such as Traci Bautista. But every time I set out to emulate it I either ended up resorting to my usual soft sponged watercolours—which I like but want to add to—or produced some kind of streaky or blobby acrylic disappointment that tried too hard to look free-form but was actually stilted and plain awful.
So, over the last few days I set myself a challenge. Try to really really let go and paint freely. I got out lots of paints, old credit cards, bubble wrap, corrugated cardboard, and even an old bottle of milk, and just played. I tried wet on wet blending (great), layering (not so great), scumbling (can’t do this right for the life of me), and then sponging, baby wipe lifting, blotting, texturing. And you know what? Loosening up did take some effort, but I enjoyed myself in the end and am reasonably pleased with (some of) the results (the third one down is my favourite).
I also learned something valuable: I always have a tendency to stop too early. Worried as I am of ruining a background by adding too much to it, I actually end up being disappointed because the paper is still missing something. Going overboard, being what I would previously dismissed as too Baroque in the use of colours and effects does the trick. I am glad I finally figured this out.
