EXPERIMENTAL PAINTING FAILURE

This is a painting I have been playing with the past several days. I tried to paint watercolor on a regular canvas. I thought because it was coated by the manufacturer with gesso, that it would accept the paint. Well, not so! The paint just beaded up. I tried massaging it and working with it but not much success. I did get some color to stick, so I sprayed it with an acrylic spray. Let that dry. Then I coated it with full strength Clear Gesso so I could save what was underneath and then tried painting again. The paint didn't bead up but it crawled beyond the lines and generally was a mess. I was ready to totally cover the whole thing up but decided to play with what I had since I could hardly "ruin" it. It was already "ruined". This is a very freeing situation when you have a dog to play with. I added line with a pen and full strength liquid watercolor. I used some watercolor crayon here and there. Overall, it turned out fair. I will probably wind up reusing the canvas later. In the meantime, I will leave it as is. I think I prefer laminating watercolor paper to a canvas rather than painting watercolor directly on the canvas. There are still more experiments to be tried.