Pre-Varnish Varnish For Your Varnish

Goddamn Paint Supplies

Jul 04, 2024

OK, so apparently there is ANOTHER THING you need to coat your paintings with BEFORE THE VARNISH GOES ON! So now I need something called Isolation Coat which Jerry’s has. Goddammit! You know what I also NEVER did?? I never varnished my oil paintings :( I didn’t really know I had to. Whatever. They are dusty as fuck and live in the garage for the most part anyway. But I am so mad I never majored in painting now! I could have actually LEARNED TO PAINT! Community college was garbage. The painting teacher didn’t teach painting we just painted whatever and got critique. And now here I am, old and struggling and poor and trying to budget for MULTIPLE fucking coatings for my crap ass paintings that are so abominably amateur I hate it. The mid-life crisis continues apace as you can tell.

Here is my latest art supply haul (for all the good decent materials are going to do for me)

Oh no! I also bought metallics! Oh no!! I don’t like to use metallics a lot. They are usually very specific and can come off gimmicky if used wrong. But now I have 2 tubes and I need to use them.

Sorry! I’m not having a great time with the art right now. Maybe it means I’m on the edge of a breakthrough. Maybe I need to switch back to watercolor and practicing gouache for a time. On top of that, fucking instagram is getting me. Everyone has super cool sketchbooks full of art better than I could dream of making, and using good supplies and OMG, I can’t afford to do that. I can’t fill a sketchbook with turner acrylic gouache practice- are you kidding?? And I can’t afford any other gouache except Marie’s. I have looked at the price per tube of Windsor Newton and other brands and oh dang! And do you have any idea how expensive watercolor sketchbooks are and how few sheets of paper they have?!?

OK- enough whinging! Good grief shut up! Here is some art.

The inking is atrocious, but I did successfully use a limited color palette inspired by the color scheme books. The three main colors are Artfinity markers I bought from Jerry’s. They are nice, but the brush nibs could use more squish. I used color pencil in the hair and eyes. I work wet on wet too much which increases bleed.

I feel like I’m always in search of better art media as if that will help me be a better artist, and I am too lazy to go back to fundamentals. Anyway, don’t feel sorry for me- I did this all to myself.

The surrealist cat painting is coming along. I will debut it here. The progress snaps are on Insta (which, thanks I hate it. It makes me feel bad about my work.) And speaking of paintings, I never posted the scan of the cat and dog painting. I call it “Friends Meet”.

Plus! I am getting greeting cards printed with all my acrylic paintings on them! I will be putting them together in sets of 5 for $15??? That sounds fine right? They will come with envelopes too of course. I’m going to go see if the art supply store will also sell them. they have a section for local Salem artists. So. I dunno, I’m still doing stuff to try and make money.

And these are the last of the Square Foor show pics!