A new test painting with a new medium... For the first version of this area - second version of the painting - I tried increasing the size of the characters by 50%. (see the April 9th entry.) After working the original composition in various ways to accommodate larger characters, it became clear that it just simply was not going to work. The composition would become way too compromised.... so, back to original sizing for the characters... perhaps just a tad larger. This is a new test painting underway...




The Medium: Made a big mixing mistake that seems to have worked out quite well. I purchased some Canada Balsam from Studio Products. it's like a very thick stand oil. I meant to mix a medium with it using 9 parts Damar, 2 parts Canada Balsam and 1 part turpentine. I somehow screwed up my measurements and mixed the formula with 6 parts of Canada Balsam rather then 2... Well... might as well try it out, right... and quite amazingly, I really liked it... :)