Brusho and Bleach

I have done 2 Brusho demonstrations in the last couple of weeks and the second one was certainly a challenge. They wanted a Winter scene which was fine as I had a few images I could choose from and settled on a photo my sister took in Central Park on one of her trips to New York. I have painted it in watercolour and once before in Brusho but a few years ago so decided to revisit it.

I used only 3 colours Crimson, ub and lemon and used my Confuscious Fude for the pen work adding wax here and there to reserve some of the snow with the plan that I would add some bleach towards the end of the painting to create a snowy effect.

That all worked quite well and here is the first effort

Quite pleased with it and obviously more time at home to step back and view from a distance etc etc.

I was then working on another piece I was preparing for an All Day Workshop I am running next week and realised my Bleach spray was broken (I use a 50:50 ratio bleach or Miltons to water) so I searched out another bottle and transferred it over.

And off I went to my demo....

I had drawn the image in pencil but wanted to show them the pen and how I use it and also the wax and then I started on the painting. All was going fairly well and although the colours were a bit intense I told them I had something up my sleeve to address it and all would be well lol!!

So I got my trusty bleach and gave it a good spray....the problem was it came out more like a stream and ended up bleaching a lot more than I bargained for which then meant a frantic rush at the end where I was having to paint into it a lot more than I would have liked. I did explain that the bleach had covered too much but when I held it up everyone seemed to actually like it and in fact some preferred it to the original.....

Anyway as I was doing some preparation for my workshop next week I decide to have a look at it with fresh eyes and I have worked on it some more today. I am quite pleased with it now as I think it has captured a very chilly feel to it, more than the first as the Ub bleaches to a more turquoise colour which is cooler and has worked to produce an icy feel.

So onto the pieces I have been working on today.

I am running an Autumn/Winter workshop and I have an image of some thistles I took a couple of weeks ago

I wanted to experiment more with the black as I don't use it a lot but really liked it when I used it with yellow for the nude I did here.

I have used it with turqouise, green, red but decide to try another colour I don't use that much...dark brown for this. I wasn't bothered about capturing the scene, I wanted more texture and part of the workshop is about using masking fluid with Brusho so more about adding a bg around the subjects.

I have also been working on another Winter scene for the same workshop which I haven't completed yet...more on that later.

So, again all was going well and I got to the stage where I decided to add some bleach, I realised that the spray gun was not switched to the right setting so hoping that would fix the problem...sprayed with gay abandon, and yes you guessed, took most of the painting away...again.... and the same with the winter scene I was working on. The problem is you don't know as you spray how much is enough as the bleach continues working for quite a few minutes after the initial contact...note to self, less is definitely more and I need to act with restraint!

Here is the painting after bleaching and a little work done to it

As you can see it still needs work to define the subjects a little more but I could now see where I was going and also added a touch of yellow to the mix.

This is the finished piece and it actually looks better in real life than on here which I have to say isn't always the case but this is a framer!!