Maggie – Sink or Swim

I know I’ve been away for way too long.  The only time of night I feel like writing at the moment is right before I go to bed, but I know what I’m like when I get on here, it takes me hours to say what I want to say, then I end up going to bed late which makes me a wee bit psychotic and I don’t know what I’m talking about any way.  Last night I was thinking about little grey kittens with top hats and pink noses.  I have no idea why, it’s just where my brain went.  Then, this morning because I was still tired from thinking about kittens too much I had flash backs of past relationships.  I decided to stalk my ex-boyfriend (he has a WordPress! Who knew WP was useful for stalking ex’s! In only found him by Googling his name.  Stupidly his WP is named after him) and was pleasantly surprised he now looks like a tramp, so that makes me feel lucky I’m not still with him.  I guess tramps are nice people, but I wouldn’t want a boyfriend who looks like he has been dragged through a hedge backwards after rolling about in hippo dung and washing his pants in the Ganges.

Anywhoo.  Apart from not writing and not blogging, I’ve been painting (and studying, but that is just boring so we won’t talk about that).  There are a million ideas in my head at the moment and I can only just about get them down on paper.  Then I find a doodle I fall in love with and a painting is born.

This is Maggie aka. “Sink or Swim”.

Sailor Mummy was freaked out by it as she has her bottom on show, but mermaids must have bottoms, right?

I’ve been working on this one for about three weeks. Here is how it went…..

First I let my imagination have a little play and made a sketch of the lady.  I took inspiration from old sailor tattoos, because they are the best kind.  There are quite a few out there that use the mermaid and her tail as a kind of frame to a middle picture, so this idea isn’t my own, but the execution is.

 

Then I made two copies.  One on watercolour paper, which would be the original and one photocopy so I could test the colours and see if what I saw in my head looked OK on paper.

This bit it kind of fun because I can just slap the colours on.

Then I could start the proper painting.

I took this photo after around five layers of green paint on the tail.  I guess I found out it’s easier to layer on the paint gradually than slap it on thick and regret it later!

And then she was completed.

I name her Maggie (follow the link, you’ll see who I mean) pretty much after I’d drawn her and added “Sink or Swim”, because it seemed to fit.

You see, the ship in the middle is my ship.  You know, the one I hop on to escape a psychosis or a panic attack.  Mermaids in folk law are malevolent creatures associated with ship wrecks and such things, but I consider myself a lady of the sea, maybe a mermaid without a tail (or I’m just having another psychosis) and I’d like to think they would look out for my ship, just like Bourbon and PAZ do. Maggie is the main protector, the mother figure.  Sink or swim is because I can hear Maggie saying it, as she is full of wise words and good advice.  We all have a chance to fail or succeed, and we all must remember that if life gets you down, you know what you’ve got to do? Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swimming, swimming……..

Love Sailor xox