Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Painful Lessons


Ouch! The lessons you remember the best are the ones that hurt the most - and I'm hurting today!

It's doesn't help that it's entirely my fault. This canvas is 60 x 90, stretched. It started as a painting by somebody else that I've had for many years. One day recently I painted over it, thinking it was an ugly painting, but a great textured surface. I layered several coats of gesso, then painted the background as you see above. I gridded it off, and started the painting. It's a travel theme, and the first square was Niagara Falls. I used some really strong tape to tape off the edges of the Eiffel Tower square, and when I pulled it off, not only the paint but all the texture down to the raw canvas came off. Looks like it was prepped with joint compount, which has now turned all powdery. There's no connection at all between any of the previous layers of paint (the old painting) and the canvas surface. I'm trashing it.

On top of that, I was submitting photography images for a project, and when I resized four of them to email, I accidently saved over the original files! Yikes! I do have a backup, so I'll be okay, but I sure felt like ... well, you know.

I have received the new power supply for my external hard drive. It's very intimidating. The tech guy assured me that it's very easy to install "just 12 screws". But the way the day is going, maybe I should wait til tomorrow.

3 comments:

Karen Jacobs said...

Awgeeze! Joint compound sucks as a texture base... btdt! Also tried painting on someone else's texture once and that was bad news as well. I think there's DNA in texture application and if the match isn't right, forget it! Bet you'll sail through the next attempt 'cuz it will be all your doing.

Anonymous said...

That sounded really good until you said about the joint compound...I like the theme idea though. Thanks for sharing!

Walker said...

Basic lesson - don't use joint compound on a painting! Ouch!