Some Risky Erasing With Alcohol

No, I'm not talking about going on a bender with booze in an effort to erase one's sorrows; I'm passing along a hint I received from that visiting art collector a couple of weeks ago. He claimed that alcohol (of the rubbing kind) can be used to remove oil paint from a surface. I knew it could work with acrylic, but that's the first time I heard of using an alcohol solution for oil paint.

Well, I've been annoyed at the fact that I had taken a short cut on the water ripples on the right side of this painting several months back, so I decided to do a test trial on a small spot in the lower right hand corner, using a cotton swab. It worked! So now I'm going to redraw the lines and make the swirls larger, rather than just faking it with so many parallel lateral lines, as you can see in the previous iteration if you scroll down in this blog. Of course it will set my timetable back, but I'll be a happier painter.

Coming Of Age In The Year 2018, © 2020, detail, work in progress (click on image for larger view)

 

Meanwhile: some work on Two Spoons this morning: 

Two Spoons, Guilty Pleasures Series, © 2020, work in progress (click on image for larger view)