The Madness Continues

Two days ago, I decided the sensible thing to do would be to just concentrate on the 6 paintings I've been working on recently, and get those finished. But for weeks now, I've been turning over in my mind the problem of how to paint on the new aluminum panel. After trying out a lot of possibilities in my head, a solution presented itself, and it was time to act on it.

The panel's surface is very slippery, and I'm choosing to work on it unprimed, because the image I want to paint could be very exciting if a little of that silvery color peeks through here and there.

I started by peeling back only the upper left-hand corner, and trying out regular graphite pencil and then pastel pencil in order to draw the grid lines I'll need to place the brushstrokes. (The image is mostly swirling water, so it'll be necessary to be accurate.) Neither was easy to remove. Then I tried placing tiny dots instead at the corner of each square inch, and that seems to be working well.

Here's what it looks like now:

Time to let it dry for a while.