We may think, as artists or creatives, that the sole onus rests on us, when we plan to execute a creative idea. However, we need to take note of the weather. (I am not referring to the impact of the weather on our state of mind, which is another issue altogether, but its impact on the media and methods we use.) I will take a paragraph from my Journey with Jeddah book to “substantiate my claims”. The weather is kind too, because it may provide new opportunities to expand our artistic repertoires.
This piece comes from the chapter: "The old city and modern city scenes in oil colour on board." On the farm in the Kalahari region, when I was doing the acrylic desert scenes with the old-fashioned mouth airbrush, I decided to tackle a few oil colour versions of the Jeddah city scenes too, and I wanted to use the same techniques I had used with great success before. I draw with the gesso in the spout bottle and wait a day or two for it to dry and then I apply a dark oil colour over the lines and then I would wait about three weeks for that to dry before I would paint lighter colours over that and then finally scrape off the recent layer to reveal the dark lines and then the work would be complete. However, this time my method did not deliver the results I was used to, because maybe the weather (or the paint quality?) interfered. So, I was forced to scrape off more than what I usually do in order to manipulate the paint and to reach a final product that I felt resembled something I could sign my name to; new techniques had to be tried because the trusted oil colour techniques somehow proved to be unreliable for some reason.
I include one of these city scenes which gave me a few nervous moments when the paint and the weather could not reach an amicable agreement. I called this work, "Familiar street", which is a bit "ironic" now, because nothing seemed "familiar" when I was working on these scenes. In the end, I was happy, because I learned something: Do not try this method during winter. Have a great day and may the weather be on your side today.
It turned out fabulous.