I have our Jeanette of
Illustrated Life to thank for the most, albeit coldest, fun I've had all year, all five days of it! Remember my Norwegian coastal voyage was in December, so that doesn't count! Jeanette's method of painting with ice crystals seemed so much fun, I had to try it. The weather here has been frigid, so the timing was right. I experimented with a few colors and then hit upon indigo and phthalo green, the frozen effects of which reminded me of... northern lights! Dancing around outside at 6am, in my pajamas, on two subsequent 17F mornings, I swashed water on paper and flung paints! And shivered, but hardly noticed, in my delight! Some results were better than others, but I think all of the following look northern lightish---don't you?
This one is more purely wet on wet. The ice formed very little for some reason:
The greens were too dark here, but I loved the crystalline swirls:
I'm not sure why this one granulated instead of freezing, but that's one of the fun things about this method---it is highly unpredictable!
Thank you so much, Jeanette, for sharing this method! It's the quintessential 'creating art out of water' technique!
