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…as Gordon Ramsey would say. If you watch that show you’ll be familiar with his catch phrase! If not, well then it’s wasted on you 
Hope you like the painting either way!
© Claire Leggett
© Claire Leggett
© Claire Leggett
It’s all finished but I’ll wait for better light tomorrow to photograph it. In the meantime I’m sure you’ll be relieved to know that the masking fluid (which has been on for more like 48 days than 48 hours) did not turn into a disaster. Phew :’ A gentle rub with a soft eraser, the dried fluid rolls off and the magic appears – lovely clean areas of background colour preserved by the fluid. Genius.
Sometimes I know I want to paint but don’t know what to paint! When that mood strikes I go for a virtual visit to Kaffe Fassett’s gallery and I’ve soon got more inspiration than time to carry it out!
And so it was with this shell painting. I used a piece of vintage fabric for the background because I love the colour scheme going on here.But although it looks lovely it’s a devil to recreate with paint. It has a beautiful bronze lustre to it except where the little leaf shapes have been oversewn with an opaque thread. Time for the Art Masking Fluid me thought. This clever little liquid can be painted over areas which you want left as they are. So once I’d under painted the base colour, I painted in all the leaf shapes with AMF before covering the background again with a bronze (ink) pink (paint) mix. In between these stages it needed to ‘go off’ (dry and become tacky) and I used a hairdryer to speed that along. It can totally trash your brush so choose carefully and have some turps to hand or brush cleaner. I have also read that you shouldn’t leave it on for longer than 48 hrs but I forgot this! We’ll have to wait and see if it’s worked or not, once all the painting is completed!
