DAY 8: tissue roll art

Another late post. Gaaah, it's becoming a habit. I'll prepare Day 9's post now, just to be prompt. Okay, maybe Day 10's.

So I've got a confession to make. I love pencil-painting on tissue rolls. Some people call them "toilet paper rolls", but I hate the word "toilet" when not connected to the bathroom itself, so let's go by "tissue rolls", a'right? You know, the brown roll of paper left behind after all the tissues are consumed? I keep them. (Not all the time, otherwise my room'd be a stack of brown rolls by now, but when the mood strikes me.) And I draw on them using watercolor pencils (because I cheat at watercolors since they're so damned hard), then use a wet paintbrush to spread the pigment so they look like they were painted, not drawn.

So today I painted three. One in red spirals. One in green stripes. And the last, trees in a forest. I don't have the embarrassing photos, sadly, since I still still still don't have a camera.

Anyhow, I threw the first two away because I was frustrated. The last one, I kept. And that was the first time I realized how badly I paint when I don't have a vision as to how it was gonna look. I mean, I'm no painter. Seriously. What I do is dabble in the arts whenever I get the urge, but I've created no masterpiece worth hanging in the Louvre. Still, the first two was BAD. And I realized it was because they were done in frustration, and nothing more. They were an outlet where I could express my restlessness being cooped inside a house all day long. Leonardo da Vinci might have done something with just that, but not me. And I can't pass it off as abstract, either, because Picasso would've taken one look at it and considered it junk. (As I consider most of his work junk, no offense, Picasso fans.)

The third turned out much better coz I had everything in place: my imagination, my thoughts of a woodland glade, my need for some peace and serenity, and most of all, my clear vision as to how it would look like in the end. So it turned out fine. For a tissue roll, at least.

My dare for you: The next time your tissue roll reaches its end, draw something on the roll before you throw it out. Who knows, you might end up keeping it. ;)


P.S. I'm still working on those graphics I promised last post. Working on it at Aviary.com and Picnik.com.

P.P.S. I've chosen Urdu for my second language class at Livemocha. Will start as soon as I finish French 101 Lesson 3 of Unit 1. Which will be this Monday, if I don't procrastinate.