Why did I use masking fluid?

What a cruel outcome I recently experienced….

I painted one of my Jimi’s and really liked how it came out — I took crazy risks and by some miracle did not censor my paint strokes or color choices.

Here was the result:

In particular I enjoyed the splashes of red around the eyes, nose, and mouth, which played off of the ones around the ear and cheek.  Interestingly, the values in the photograph do not match what I did here, and yet it somehow worked (at least to my own satisfaction).

And then came the nasty surprise: it turns out that a few weeks prior to doing the painting, I had applied masking fluid in key areas around the face.  I had no recollection of this, until I noticed the markings on the paper and began to remove them.

This was heartbreaking…

And so now I face the prospect of recreating the strokes around the eyes, nose, and mouth, and we all know how that will end up — I will try too hard to match the original, and it will appear over-worked.

And so the answer is to keep painting it over and over and over again, and a few will be worth keeping.