Revisiting old art...

I pulled out a piece that I had thought I finished many many months ago only to see that the piece had drastically changed and therefore is no longer finished, from my point of view.....

I'm kinda frustrated, but not completely.

The frustration really comes from this part of me that was pleased with what I had thought was a finished piece. It was a self portrait.

I had taken several photos of myself years ago during the moment of crying or just afterwards.. This act of taking photos of myself crying was a form of self therapy. I was going through a horrible experience and had had some great difficulty in moving forward with my life.. I'm sure it sounds strange, but I felt that the camera helped me distract myself from those problems and I thought it was also a way to visually journal myself and those emotions that I was at the time unable to escape... As much as I had wanted to move on with life, past the heart break and intense pain, I also didn't want to forget how low I had felt during that time period.

I find that sometimes when people, myself included, are in a better place they often look back at the low moments in their life with less accuracy. Perhaps as a form of self preservation?? And for the sake of preventing myself from ever returning to such a traumatic state, I wanted a visual reminder of why I needed to not repeat past mistakes...

From these photos I have made a few drawings.. The first one, which is the piece that is the subject of this blog entry, was a simple graphite drawing with tea staining. I had dripped tea down a piece of paper during the same period of the photos. These drips reminded me of the tears that seemed endless...

Over those tea tears I drew myself looking away from the viewer, unable to look at the viewer. Eyes were downcast and lashes were clumping with thick black mascara with the hair pulled back into a messy bun and "painted" with a herbal tea I use to produce these lovely shades of violet blues....

NOW I get to the part that partially frustrates me!!

I really and honestly enjoyed those lovely violet blues. It matched the mood of the subject.. I had ever so carefully layered those stains to produce a sense of hair depth. highlights, lowlights and medium tones. The intensity of the stains changed as the tea fermented. I loved it!

But when I took the piece out to relook at it I noticed that the lovely violets are no longer lovely violets....

:(

They darken into shades of cinnamon. Which isn't bad... Hence why I am only partially frustrated. I am not sure exactly what caused the change. I am aware that the colors I initially see from the tea staining will gradually change over time due to it being an organic material, but I had hope that the change wouldn't have been so quick.

What do I need to do to better preserve the color?? would fixative work?? maybe I need to use a different type of paper...

Either way I now realize that I am not finished with the piece now that it had so drastically changed.. The piece still pleases me, but I realized that I needed to work a few areas further to reclaim that finished feeling.

I will post photos tomorrow morning comparing the changes of color..