Two Paintings, one competition and much experimenting!

I've been experimenting again!
These two are the results.

The Fisherman

15 x 11 inches

Saunders Waterford 140 Rough

Toward Skye

15 x 11 inches

Saunders Waterford 140 Rough

The first of the two to be created was Toward Skye.
I poured some blues and blue-greens onto wet, stretched paper.
(I do use a paper stretcher when I know I'm going to use a lot of water. The  one (five!) I have came from a UK seller on ebay, called Arthur, whose page you can find HERE, should you wish to buy one.)

Then I used a spray bottle, with the nozzle set to fine jet, to move the paint around the paper in various patterns.
How do I know where I want to spray the paint? In this case, it was random, because the whole object of this exercise was to make something up from the result of random spraying!
When I'd had enough playing with squirting paint - which by the way - is immense fun, I left it to dry in the sun. (A mere 92 in the garden at that point!)

When the painting was dry, less than five minutes later, I took it inside and propped it against the TV cabinet. I retired to the sofa to contemplate. The whole painting screamed to me 'sea'.
It still needed something, so I decided the something would be seagulls. Two in the top left and one lower right, flying across the ocean to be where his friends were flying. Once the gulls were in, I was satisfied. The painting felt complete.

Because the sea looked good to me, I decided next painting had to be The Fisherman.
This time, I wanted a recognisable face. So firstly I drew him lightly on the paper. Just enough lines to give me a feel for the face. Then I masked the pieces I wanted to stay white. I use a fine needle for applying thin lines of mask. When they were all dry, I wet and stretched the paper.

Once the paper was ready, I poured paint and sprayed it again, this time lighter blues and blue-greens to give the man the feel of the sea. When I was happy with where the colours lay, I stopped spraying.

When that part had dried, I darkened up a few areas, using a damp brush to fade them into the surrounding area. Satisfied, I removed the mask - and the resulting painting is the one you see above.

I quite like pouring and spraying - it's fast, frantic and great fun!
Give it a go - you might enjoy it too!

I've entered The Fisherman into a competition! Ken Bromley Art Supplies (here) have a cover competition once a year. The shortlist will be made public on the 23rd July. I'll let you know if it gets through.