Return of the prodigal

Still. just playin' around.
Yesterday my friend. Mariko was visiting and we got talking about water colors. She asked if I was unique in applying water based paints to acetate, transparent, grounds. I told her that when I started doing it I thought that was breaking new ground but a few months ago I found a company. Dura-lar, making a plastic film specially treated to take water soluble paints.




She asked me if I remembered the 8 1/2 by 11 transparent sheets that used to be used in overhead projectors for schools and conferences and wondered how they would work for watercolor painting.




I said; "Let's find out." As I still had a box or two of same left over from days when I did a bit of teaching and lecturing.




So! I expected to paint to ball up on the plastic, as it did, but none the less I found the patterns interesting. I laid down a couple of figures and let the paint dry.




As I often use cheap hair spray as a fixative for charcoal and, sometimes, watercolor, and as Dura-lar treated/surfaced their plastic to take watercolors I decided to spray the back side of this with hair spray, let it dry and see if it would, like the Dura-lar sheets, take watercolors without balling up.




This is the result. The red and blue figures were painted on the front, and afterwards, on the hair spray treated back I washed in the blue sky, the yellows and the greens creating the background.




Again, just playin' around.




Painted on Apollo 8 1/2 by 11 inch Transparency Film for Plain Paper Copiers