Beware when you paint…!

Something unexpected happened 7 hours into painting. I probably should have seen it coming given the hints along the way, but I didn’t realize how much worse the situation was before it was too late.

I paint on this low table with foldable legs that are so short that you have to sit on the floor. I have my water container and color pallete and my brushes on the left side, and my work-in-progress painting taking up the rest of the table (it’s quite wide). There are times where I accidentally kick the table leg and make it buckle up. When that happens, I have to unfold each leg manually. It’s not a huge deal — just a little nuisance. But 7 hours later, the two legs on my right started folding in, and I didn’t realize it. The table top collapsed and tilted fast to the right side, causing the water from the water container to spill across my art.

I screamed in panic. I spent so many hours working on this, more to go, and it was about to get ruined. I desperately held up the table with my right knee to prevent the water spilling any more save my work.

Here are couple things that I am incredibly thankful for: the paper I was using and luck itself.

The paper I use is called Hanji (한지), which is a Korean traditional paper made out of mulberry pulp. It is still paper, but it behaves like fabric. Unlike watercolor paper or normal sketch paper that would wrinkle and be unusable after contact with water, hanji will dry out almost back to its normal shape before the accident. You can even iron hanji with art already painted on it (iron on the backside, by the way) to smooth out the paper wrinkles! The paint on my paper had dried already, so the water didn’t activate it either. So my art is safe. Phew! The other thing is luck, as I mentioned earlier. I had a color palette on the table that contained liquidy dark blue paint in it. None of it spilled out onto the paper. If it had, then my art definitely would’ve been ruined. I would not have had enough calm brain cells in my head at the moment to stop the blue paint while the water was already charging.

My art is drying on a drying rack as I type. I am extremely grateful that all I have to worry about is drying my art. Nothing is ruined. I don’t have to start over. I can keep going. Thank goodness! I should be more careful with those table legs in the future.