Lessons Learned

Yesterday's fern work was a fine learning experience.

I'd really not considered my support when I mixed my pigments with chalk and watercolor medium. The milkweed paper is so very rough that a light consistency paint had little chance to attach. Acrylic paint, applied to the ferns thickly with a 3" brush, bound and filled nicely.

I most often mixed a tube color with titanium white, sometimes adding another color. My mixing took place on palette simply by spreading the paints around with my brush. All the streaks of paint looked so fantastic but were lost to a homogeneous hue when brushed onto the fronds. Not sure how I could keep that wonderful detailing.

Using the same frond proved advantageous as after a couple of layers of acrylic dried out, stiffness and durability increased, leaving me to wonder if it wouldn't be good idea to precoat and let dry as a primer.

As the fronds were so big, I was concerned about paint drying before I could completely cover it and spritzing helped there.

Negative painting might be interesting. I could probably use a light consistency paint and throw it with a brush. I wonder about airbrushing?

Just generally random thoughts...