Annmarie Throckmorton, M.A.
- Nov 8, 2017

Starting Over Or Ending Now?

It has been a few years, but last night I resumed my lifelong habit of painting. I have a lot of paint. I bought it new at top dollar, on sale, with coupons, and sought it out in garage sales, wherever. Sometimes artists give each other paints, a give and take which I have enjoyed.

For fun, I chose my oldest paints, in a very rusty tin of Marabu watercolor pans, circa 1940, ‘30s, maybe even 20’s or earlier; and misted it with water to soften for a few hours. The old style colors were very interesting to me, and only two of the pans had disintegrated (purple and a black). I was pleased to see that the warm colors had opaque qualities and the cool colors were granular, meaning the latter dried translucently with pretty flecks of paint throughout. Marabu paints would be good to paint autumn leaves, flowers, and maybe to render a map. For now, I just did a color palette study to learn how these Marabu watercolor paints work, and I got a surprise for my efforts, something beautiful on the cloth upon which I wiped my brushes. Serendipitous!

But, ouch, bending over the table made my back hurt very much. Is my Marabu color palette study a restart of my pleasant hobby, or the end of old ways? This is a lot of pain, the tears in your eyes type of pain. But I want to be able to paint again, so next time I will remember to wear my back brace, with the ice pack in it.