24 November 2010

the taste of white spirit lingering on my tongue

[WEDNESDAY 24 NOVEMBER 2010]
With Christmas coming there are toys to be made, so that all the little boys and girls don't have sad faces on Christmas day.  This means I've had extra payed work to do this morning in the workshop with Santa's elves.

But I'm ready to paint now...

My first task was to try and get that secret date plaque back on track.  I masked out the numbers and commenced with throwing whatever I could find at it: white spirit; oil paint; ink; clean water; dirty water; anything.  I poured and scraped and splattered it all on, then poured and scraped and wiped it off.  The masking fluid didn't last long, but the result was pleasing, and I took it outside to dry in the low November sun.


I've had the taste of white spirit lingering on my tongue ever since.  No amount of tea, water or cake can shift it.  I do wonder what this does to my insides.

Satisfied with myself, I've begun the next phase of "the pink path of least resistance trickling through a crack in a rock face", or "the rock face" as I affectionately call it. I wonder will I ever be happy with it?  But I must persevere or it will always be there, lurking in the corner.  I've decided to knock the glow back a bit so the neon appears deeper in the crack.

As soon as I've done this, I have a brain-wave:  Out comes the red-neon light I bought recently.  I secrete it between the joists under a shed in the garden and take some photos of the intense glow emanating from the darkness. This will give me something to reference for my next attack on "the rock face".


NEXT!  I take up my tools and set upon the large square canvas of Le Corbusier's Marseille blue-print for modern living.  The tools I use: some antique Winton no.39 Terre Verte oil colour, and then a piece of charcoal rescued from the bonfire, which looks like some kind of monolithic totem when seen out of scale.


I work on the foliage and then I go home.

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