Today’s watercolor experiment:

Today I began by abstracting another painting of mine. This painting (Abstract 072415) was an abstract of one of my photos. This time I used colors that were complementary to the blocks of color in the original. I wanted clean boundaries, straight lines between different colors. I used masking tape to cover one color while I painted the adjacent block. The trouble began when I removed the tape. The paper came off with the tape. I was so frustrated that I just pulled it of quickly, the way one does if one wants to pull a bandaid off with the minimum of pain.  In the majority of cases (all the ones I know about), the skin stays on while the bandaid comes off. In the case of my watercolor, a big swath of paper came off.

I took a break from painting.

When I felt better, I used gouache to paint the areas roughened by the tape. I pasted one segment of the tape and the ripped paper attached to it, back in its original position. A bit of scaffolding or history of the process I used to create this composition.

Here is the result of today’s experiment:

The original abstraction:

And the original photograph: