Today I snapped a cute photo of the blue tits that come on my desk to get peanuts, and I tried painting it. But I got mildly annoyed by various things and stopped halfway through, and will just rant about them instead.
In January, I was out of the previous paper that I was using, and got a new block of Canson Figuras, on purpose for oil. I used that to paint portraits from Twin Peaks a month ago.
The problem is: they're still not dry!
Usually the paintings I do will dry within a week, but this new paper doesn't soak any oil/spirit at all.
One problem is that I'm not using turpentine, but another more eco-friendly spirit that also takes longer to dry. So I thought today I'll try turpentine again, in hopes it dries faster.
However turpentine really stinks; I had forgotten how much, and it also dries too fast while I'm painting, so it's not very pleasant. Maybe also because I'm not used to it.
After painting a bit, I also found that the turpentine-mixed colours look dull, and then I realised that doing the whole picture well would take ages to get right because of all the plant leaves, kind of bit more than I can chew, or want to chew today.
Anyway eventually I wasn't into it any more and I stopped there. I didn't get to painting the bird, maybe another day.
Jany Belluz