I never like washing paint down the drain, and I keep my gouache useable in its ceramic palette with a damp cloth over it between projects, but there comes a time when it’s become too muddy with mixing, or I’ve simply squeezed too much from the tube, and it’s not viable to keep it hydrated, or allow an infrequently-used colour to remain in a well until I need it again (looking at you, Brilliant Orange) so it needs to be dealt with.
I promised myself that I would paint a picture using any remaining paint and I actually do this more often than not. If, however, I am at the end of a sustained bout of illustrating I am frankly all out of energy even to copy something, so I have been making use of my paper offcuts too and enjoying some mindful sweeping with my best brush across a rectangle of Fabriano Artistico, and losing myself watching the interaction of water, pigment, and paper.
I am still really deeply pursuing my National Geographic and Condé Nast Traveller magazine collages but I wondered if I could chop up these ‘palette cleansers’ I suppose you could call them, and make some art.
I have an old Moleskine sketchpad where I stick any reference images, and I found a nice one of a highway through a desert, so gave this a go:
The paper in my Leuchtturm sketchbook isn’t really robust enough so for my next one I shall use my Fabriano one. I love the immediacy of collage but this is the first time I have used a) painted paper and b) cut out shapes rather than things so I need to experiment a bit more.
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