Oooopsism

These are called Ooops paints from Home Depot. The containers in this shot are small color testers you can have whipped up for a mere 3 razbucknicks. People buy them take them home and then bring them back for a refund... Why? I have no idea probably because they want to do what I did, buy them all up for 50 cents. Some of these are from Martha, she uses them to touch up her shabby chic furniture and some I picked up but they are all random colors. I've been looking for a different way to start out in the studio so I took all the ooops paints, filled up a bunch of cups and started sloshing the paint around with cheap brushes.

I discovered two things right off the bat; 1) It freed me up because I could not be literal with color and 2) Instant surface. The paint is thick and drippy and dried right away in the Sahara-like heat of my studio. I did 3 18x24's, let them dry thoroughly and commenced to over paint with transparent glazes of liquin and oil. Whut? Yes, why not? It's a latex paint base, much like gesso. The randomness of the colors and different paint quality gave me a looser more care-free or careless start.

Also the surface quality is different, a little slicker but tacky because of the liquin glazes. Rather than bring the color around to the reference which I am prone to do, I would just follow the paint to see what colors I wanted to end up with.

It got me to thinking about taking this process to the field. In the Florida sun, the goopy underpainting would dry right up, leaving me with instant surface and loose structure to overpaint with oil. I actually like the starts as they are but wanted to see what happened when I worked on top. 

So far, I like what is happening. It's pushing me out of my old boring self and into a newer, more less boring self. My end goal is to not paint out all of the painterly stuff, just let it be.

here's my next victim with the Ooops under painting and some transparent glazing on top. I'll work on it today and hopefully have it done by 4 or 5... will post it soon, whether it's good or baaaaaa-aaaad.