Green Experiment

When I started my current acrylic paintings, first I had to determine which of my old acrylic paints were still good.

This led to some experimenting, when I realized that my tube of green paint had mostly dried up and would no longer squeeze out of the tube. I cut open the tube with scissors, then dropped the dried part into a bucket of water. I soaked some ripped up strips of paper in this green water for a few hours, and then crumpled them up and laid them to drip-dry on a small flat canvas board I had. I figured it would give the background some interesting texture for whatever not-yet-planned acrylic painting I would use the canvas board for in the future.

I mean, I couldn't do anything else with the dried up paint tube, so I thought I might as well try. The paint was destined for the trash can otherwise.

So here is the end result of the experiment:

Strips of watercolor paper soaked in green water

The canvas, complete with the texture of dried, crumpled up bits of soaked green paper strips

I don't know why my phone camera has started putting these shadow stripes across my pictures. I don't see it happen anywhere else but when I'm trying to take a photo of artwork in my basement studio. Maybe it's something about the fluorescent lighting down there? It doesn't seem to have problems in any other room of my house, or outside.

It's really annoying.

Anyway, the response on Instagram was pretty great! I got several comments:

It's not something I'll be using anytime soon (I'm a little busy with other projects at the moment), but eventually I'll come back to this canvas board and make a cool abstract painting out of this. :)