July 27, 2010

River View, Yellow Face

First, the good news. It was a beautiful morning and the paint was flowing. I'd been thinking about the geometric shapes you just randomly find in nature and the wedge-shaped swatch of grass in the river jumped out at me.

Now, as happens often when I paint, I drop paint brushes. This time, focusing on the painting, not the brush, I picked the fallen brush up, wiped the sweat from my face, kept painting... and then realized the brush had dropped into a nice blob of cadmium yellow light. My gloves were covered in it, as the handle of the brush transferred the pigment to my hands. I wiped my face on my sleeve, just to see if any had come off on my face and my red shirt was coated in yellow. I was completely distracted by the certainty that I was covered in yellow paint and cut the morning's work short. At the car, with my box of wipes and mirror, all I can say is that it was much worse than I thought. Eight wipes later, I was down to just having completely yellow hair at my temples and a certain sallow look to my face.

No comments: