It’s been a few days… I feel like I’ve nearly completed the painting on the long piece of wood. One thing I’ve done differently to this painting is that I’ve used gouache, which I’ve never really used before. I must say I love how vivid the colors are and how flexible it is in the sense that adding water to it mimics the freedom of watercolor. It really has the best of both worlds of acrylic and watercolor. I love ink but sometimes I need more pigment in certain areas.
I didn’t actually plan on what I was painting, I thought I was just going to have a floating, ink wash space where I have senseless blobs of color, but as the ink took form, I recognized the characters I was sketching at the same time in my sketchbook. It must be destiny or something. Or the characters really want to take life on this piece of wood.
I poured resin over the painting. I’ve never done this with a piece of wood that has a hole in it before, so this proved to be a challenge. In the end I decided to place a plastic sheet under the hole and see what happens after it dries on top of it. I know that people use the layering method of adding different imagery or colors in each later as it dries to make a ‘3D’ resin piece (an idea I would like to explore in the future) - but for now, I want to see if the hole can turn out to have a ‘window’ effect opening the eyes to the concept of ‘surveillance’ and ‘transparency’.
This time round, I accidentally mixed too much resin, more than I needed to cover the wood plank. I remembered something I bought a few days ago at a supermarket - a lone Barbie, I picked it up because I’ve been thinking about the theme of nostalgia recently, and have been marathoning childhood films with my roommates those few days. I thought about painting it, placing it in different settings, etc. At that moment, though, when I had no-where to pour the resin, I picked up the plastic box with the Barbie in it and just poured it in the box, over its head. I looked at it from underneath through the plastic, and the results were disturbing. The facial features appear to be distorted from the thick resin. It was quite a thing of beauty though poorly and spontaneously executed. I’ll wait for it to dry completely and perhaps take photos or paint/draw it. See what happens.