Misty Mountain Road

Wow - this was TOUGH! I'm afraid I picked a difficult ref photo over at WetCanvas, but I just loved the scene and couldn't pass up the challenge. I haven't painted in a while, because I've been taking art journaling classes and been busy keeping up with lessons, and so I'm quite rusty with the brushes! I did a little resarch through my personal art library on painting fog or mist. Many tips and techniques are written about this effect, and many have one area of agreement. . . paint wet-in-wet. Also, it seems that most agree that lifting with a tissue will give a fog effect. That good old master, Edgar Whitney, suggested using an atomizer to mist with water and then I read that Susan Bourdet likes to use white goauche. So, I decided to try all the above - LOL - and since I really love using my little atomizer and hardly ever do, it was a natural little toy to resurrect. I used white goauche with just a smidgeon of payne's grey in my atomizer and just misted the heck out of this. What fun -- I just LOVE old-fashioned tools of the trade. For those of you who may not be familiar with this little goody (that gives an airbrush effect), you can see it here http://www.dickblick.com/zz034/00/ There is a trick to working this effectively, the tube that runs vertically will move -- it fits in it's sleeve stiff, so it takes a little bit of pushing. You have to push it up so that it touches the tube that runs horizontally (which is the one you blow through). It needs to be up above the edge of the horizontal one, actually almost to the top edge of the horizontal one. And that's the secret, you just blow through the mouthpiece and a super fine mist comes out. Be sure to use a piece of paper to shield areas you don't want sprayed, though. A little "helper" that I figured out the last time I used this is one of those plastic vials that cut flowers sometimes come in. I fill the vial with my medium and then put the atomizer tube in it and it's quite easy to hold them together with one hand, freeing up my other hand to hold the paper shield. Fun! And it truly DID make a huge difference in this painting -- the wet-in-wet and lifting with a tissue didn't work that great for me. Possibly because it's so blasted hot and I live in the dry desert and I couldn't keep my paper wet!