From Trash to Coolness: Saving a Failure of a Painting

I got fed up with this painting, so I cut it up into 4 pieces.

     One of the reasons I gave up on this piece is because it was one of my first attempts at painting with gouache. I tried making up my lack of experience with this paint by using watercolor as well, but I overestimated my ability to improvise… I yelled “Screw it!” and threw the piece of crap at the wall (of my mind). After cooling myself down, I looked at the painting again. I didn’t want to waste the perfectly good board (especially since I got it for Christmas!), and liked the colors I splattered on it… I decided to do a little experiment with it.

     I took the 4 pieces I cut and taped each one so that the painting area was 4X6. Taking my old and cracked iPad Pro, I took a picture of each piece, and imported them into Procreate.

 

I then messed around with each piece in Procreate.

     My goal was to cover up all of the white areas, and to just let my imagination run wild. Below are the GIFs of the process I went through in planning each piece out. As you can see I played around with several ideas for a few of them before coming up with the final idea.

     After settling on the final drafts, it was time to translate the digital ideas to the actual pieces. 

 

I gathered my art tools!

A. Dragon Aroma Oil Burner ( I use this to hold the masking liquid )
B. Dr. Ph. Martin’s Frisket Mask Liquid Level 1
C. Mason Jar full of water that used to be clean…
D. A small nail to spread the mask liquid.
E. Nib pen (HUNT GLOBE Owl-Pointed 513 EF), Sakura Gelly Roll Pen (White), STAEDTLER Mars non-print Pencil, and The Fine Touch brushes.
F. Speedball Super Black India Ink, and Super Pigmented Red Acrylic.
G. Canson Illustration Board
H. Pacific Arc Drafting Tape

     And just started painting away. I only used the mask liquid for one painting. I then started blotting in the trees and skies with the black ink. After finishing the large areas I worked in the smaller details with my pen, and finally finished by using the white Gelly Roll pen to add the creatures and my signature. Below are the finished pieces!

*Click the images to enlarge

[ngg src=”galleries” ids=”5″ display=”basic_thumbnail” thumbnail_crop=”0″]     The process was quick and fun! I really like improvising, and think it brings out the most creativity in me. Let me know if you ever did something like this in the comments below!