Flip Cup and Two Dirty Pours

My first ever canvas to paint on. I can’t tell you how excited I was, and how nervous. Getting canvas imported here, with the overseas shipping and customs charges – well, it’s quite an investment. I had an idea for what I wanted to do. A three cup plan and as usual you can laugh along with me as those plans go completely awry again.

How about I mix lots of different colors of blue and green, along with some white, and try to get a graduated effect on the canvas. Start at lighter colors, then more mid-tones and then darker.  OK, so that was the idea anyway. The center cup can be a flip cup and then the outer cups can be dirty pours.

As it turns out – what was I thinking! How big did I think that canvas was exactly? I had enough paint in those three cups to paint the entire desk. Twice at least!  You have got to laugh. So it was no surprise when the painting really didn’t come out as planned.

I do still like it, it’s pretty cool. I also had enough wasted paint left over all over the desk for my next project. In fact when you see how much I get out of all that wasted paint, you’ll laugh again. But the good new is, it’s really not wasted, and the whole exercise was another valuable learning experience in how NOT to judge paint volumes.

Do you have trouble deciding how much paint you need? Do you have any kind of handy chart you’ve drawn up to narrow that down? An area I certainly need to work on!

As usual, you can check out the slideshow below for images from this pour, both wet and dry, and close ups of the details.