After mucking up the muses by over-working them (https://strayfisharts.com/2025/04/06/shadow-army/) I took another run at the shadows today. Different shadows or I’m pretty sure I’d have repeated the nonsense.

This time I made four A3 sized paintings using the same starting point of watercolour pencil, dampened with gloss varnish and water, adding the tissue collage at edges and bends and then flicking varnish across the whole.

There are no photos of the dampening/flooding stage because they were flat on the horizontal easel to permit expansion and drift without directional tracking.

Once they were dry, I applied a dilute Paynes grey wash and, in a departure from the first series, made a print by laying a sheet of white cartridge over all four paintings and rolling it flat with a tub of paint. The result is below the individual images.

No fair muses here; these ladies are bad-ass!

This one comes with feet.

I must say I rather like these, and while I can edit the blue out of the images using PhotoDirector or Google, I’d like to get better primary images as well.

Blue shift minimised.

I can’t get closer because the camera immediately begins to adjust its settings and turns everything blue. I had to do these quickly to catch it off guard so they may be out of focus. Someone remind me to avoid minimalist black and white paintings on a white ground.

Or maybe see how they look as negatives.

Some of these may find their way into a second video.

(c) SCH 2025