Part the Mistveil
I write this as I wait for my paints to dry. It's a fascinating thing, working with traditional media. Like many people, I bust out my hobby tools in the night, past office hours. I would spend time winding down before sleep, and let my paintings dry overnight. In the morning, I would usually be greeted by a sight I would not expect. The colors undergo alchemical transformations as I sleep, some mellowing into the paper, some blending and blurring together long after a brush have touched them. The painting works itself as much as I work on it.
Sometimes I'm too impatient and insist on working over a still-wet paper. It won't do. I just have to wait for it to dry. Slowly, to build layer upon layer upon layer, a color you've never seen before. To relinquish control of the brush, to let water and paper fibers achieve forms you can't quite plan or replicate.
It's an intoxicating feeling, and one reason I can't warm up to the drawing tablet my friend has graciously given me. My strokes are clumsy, the edges too sharp. I can't feel the paper. I can't tilt it to let paint disperse as they wish. This is not an indictment towards digital painting, as traditional painting brings me a different kind of concern. I haven't been very successful in digitizing my sketchbook for archival purposes. They always come out flat, dull, robbed of the subtle shift of color and the underlying patterns of the paper grain. Perhaps I should let them be, relish in the ephemeral.
A piece of paper I keep by my desk is special. It was initially used to test my newly delivered inks and paints, but now repurposed to hold a small project: At the end of each painting session, rather than rinsing my palette, I would reactivate them all and add something onto the paper. Random strokes, unintentional combination of colors. How it will look like at the end of the year is something most curious. We shall see. Unfortunately it only occurred to me many days through that it would perhaps be fun to photograph it day by day, a tracker of my journey.
The storm has passed.
This morning, I will encounter yet another shade I have never seen.