The Pitfalls of Green Tape

I remember taking a watercolour workshop a number of years ago, in which the instructor made an adamant stipulation that we not bring coloured painter's tape to class - the standard masking tape or white tape was fine, but there was no tolerance for blue or green or any other colour of tape. At the time I hadn't been painting all that long so this struck me as a rather odd, individual quirk of this particular artist but hey, one that was easy enough to follow. As my painting experience has grown over the years, I have come to see the wisdom of his words but that lesson really hit home for me this week. 

I had been working on another free form piece that started out with purple as the dominant colour. White tape had been added to my list of needed supplies - primarily hoping for better adhesion and hence masking, than the green painter's tape I had been using up from my stash - but in setting this piece up I had used the green.

Once again my plan was to let the art dictate to me what to do, admittedly influenced by my purchase of the new-to-me phthalo turquoise. After working over several days, it just wasn't coming together and I finally decided to write off the loss and abandon it to my orphan drawer. 

But first, I had to strip the tape off. And wow, I was not prepared for just how much of a difference that made to the look. It's not the best thing I've ever done but neither is it the hot, unsalvageable mess I thought it was LOL. So, hats off to Joe F. and no more coloured tape for me!

Purple Koolaid (C) Susan Langdon aka Nukiart
mixed media and collage on 11 x 15 watercolour paper

My scanner cannot accommodate the width of this piece so there's a portion of the two smaller pieces missing from the right edge. I set this up with the intention of it being an all in one tryptych ie one frame for three complementary paintings, however I don't have the technical capability/tools to make that happen for posting here. Hell, I'm just happy when I can get the image to sit where I want it to LOL.