Spray Paint

I've discovered that I love spray paint. Good old fashioned cans of spray paint. While I haven't as yet incorporated it into any "serious" work yet, I've found that I'm using it more and more in my journals and in the test pieces I do in preparation for the real stuff, so it's only matter of time before I start to use it in the finished products too.

David suggested I buy an air brushing system because it would be far more versatile, which is true. I would be able to mix my own paints which would give me a virtually limitless range of colors and the numerous nozzle tips would give me greater control over my spraying (though with some "professional" spray paints, there are individual nozzles that can be fitted to the cans). Still there is something very hardcore, very visceral about a plain old can of spray paint in one's hand and making something beautiful with it. There is nothing quite like it, in my opinion. I recently was working on a page in an art journal of mine that was comprised of concentrated watercolor ink, watercolor marker, acrylic paint, oil marker, photographs, paper, and an oil based enamel spray paint that was unbelievably vivid on the page. The only down-side was that it took days for each application of even small amounts of the spray paint to dry enough to add the next layer. Patience is not my strong suit, and even though in the end it all worked out fine, having it take nearly two weeks to lay in the background for just a page in a journal was irksome.

Still, there is nothing like spray paint. Not only do I like to work with it, but I like to look at other people's work with it too. Two of my favorite things go hand in hand in this respect: art made with spray paint and trains. I love to stand by the tracks and watch freight trains from across the country rumble by, each car beautifully painted by an anonymous artist located somewhere between here and there, wherever "there" might be. And while the talent and the abilities vary wildly from graffiti to graffiti and from car to car, every once in a while a boxcar painting will come along that is substantially more articulate and intricate than all the others and I am blown away by the talent that that artist has and I always wish that I could meet the person who made it, or even better still, watch them work, can of spray paint in their hand.