Leaf Ghost #24

Get right back up on the horse, right?

The materials I used for this one were practically identical to #23, right down to the colors. I made a few small adjustments, such as using paint cups. But most of the “what have we learned?” here was psychological.

The first lesson was to not paint angry. That’s something I should have remembered from meditation practice in the past. When I’m upset, things like breath control and simple, repetitive actions – normally so soothing for me – just make things worse. So last time around every little thing that went wrong amped my stress level up and up. And that last, fatal smear ... it was ugly.

Further, I found myself rushing through it. My biggest error (other than the smear) was putting down the next layers of masking tape before the last round of paint had time to dry. That resulted in several damage spots that had to be retouched, which of course added to the stress level.

This time around, I make a particular point of taking my time at every step. After each color, I paused long enough to listen to a song or two before moving to the next color. And I stopped for at least 15 minutes before putting down a new set of tape. 

To be sure, I still made mistakes. When I painted row four column two, I forgot to do the small bit of red in the upper right corner. But with my Saturday-with-no-work-to-worry-about mindset, it was less “dammit now the whole thing’s ruined!” and more “no problem, I’ll fix it when I retouch the rough edges at the end.”

The result was not only a more calm experience, but it’s also a milestone in the leaf ghost project. Though I’ve been happy with some previous entries, this is the first one that really turned out how I imagined it when I started working on ghosts earlier this year. I like the color combination. I like the interplay between spaces. I even like the spots where the paint isn’t completely even and the edges aren’t smooth. Neatness appeals to me, but I also appreciate the look and feel of actual paint on real paper. If I wanted everything to be completely smooth and even and easy to adjust, I could stick to digital art. And with these works I’m specifically trying to give myself a break from that stuff, at least for a little while.

For future technical reference, this was Holbein acrylic gouache. The background dark is a mix of forest green and titanium white, and the light is just titanium white. The foreground dark is carmine, and the light is a mix of scarlet and titanium white. The shadow is forest green.