Trina Ganson

Studio Friday is my favorite day of the week. It’s the one day that I dedicate to a full 6-8 hours in the studio. During the work week, I am always trying to fit more in, an hour here or ten minutes there. But it’s never enough time to really get into what your working on, I feel like I’m always just warming up. So Friday is my scheduled day of art making goodness.

I am always learning new things about myself during Studio Friday,and this Friday was no acceptation. Fridays lesson was the art of being patient. As I was creating watercolor monotypes I thought I was prepared.  A watercolour monotype is a print that requires the process of painting watercolour on to a prepared plexi glass plate. Which leads to a very slow drying watercolour. Honestly it was hardly drying at all. I did, however try to fan dry it, although that didn’t do much so I was at the mercy of evaporation.  So I wait and as I am waiting I am getting excited and the anticipation is building as I am watching it slowly evolve. The wet plexi glass version of the monotype is always different from the paper version. And that, sometimes, is the best part of the whole process. When you finally get to print, it has changed from what you thought the final result would be. Paper, water, application of paint, pressure from the press and on it can go. All of these little elements can change the monotype, that’s why you only really get one shoot to create it and that’s why I needed to wait.   So I tried to wait, and waited some more. I even worked on a few other art works that needed a little love.  But that monotype kept calling to me, and I thought since it only has a little pooling of water perhaps it will print fine. So I went ahead and printed the monotype.

Full on spillage! All out the bottom and all over the paper. So patience was necessary. I also learned to bring a hair dryer to the studio!