...but not today. I am trying to figure out how to add text to a post after I have uploaded a photo. I just need to play with it and I'll figure it out.
Anyway, the painting for today is on Yupo ..a plastic paper which creates very juicy effects and takes forever to dry. It was fun to use in Vegas, but tougher here in rainy SL. I took some newer photos this morning and will try to get them up within the next week or so.
My challenge of late has been to create a "glow" within my paintings. Besides saving whites, you can light up a watercolor by layering glazes of cool over warm. I've been using teacups as a vehicle for the game, trying for more transparency and light. Purer colors definitely help. Repeating an image over and over again also refines the drawing and composition.
Now for true confessions: Recently I have been doing most of my work in the wee hours of the morning. My alarm is perpetually set for 5:00 am. Two mornings a week I get up and run three miles. Two mornings a week I get up and walk three miles. Two glorious mornings a week, I get up at dawn, grab my coffee cup and tiptoe back up the stairs to my studio. At dawn's arrival there is no one else moving in the house. My DH is sleeping, the dogs are are dreaming of birds to find and I am mixing washes or drawing away with my color corrected lamp trained on my work table. This is a wonderful hour of silence and much can be accomplished in little time without telephones, hungry hubbies and bored pups. I've tried to grab time in the evenings , but it is 7:00 pm by the time I have finished cleaning up in the kitchen and after 8 hours of running a non-art related business, grocery shopping, housecleaning..such as it is..I am wiped out. I want to put my feet up and escape in a novel or movie, but at the early hour, I am full of steam and ready to rock.
I begin by spraying my palette into life, letting the moisture seep into the fat globs of paint while I clear a space or do a quick drawing. The recent regime is to lay down some warm washes..all those lovely quinacridone golds, reds and coral. This has inspired me to expand my yellows and think of them as light bulbs that will light up the rest of the painting. This has to dry before I can do anything else, so I pick up a painting that is further along. This mornings piece was a vase of flowers..great pink blooms of roses accents by yellow daisies and some tiny purple flowers. The large washes were done and it was time to do those little flowers and petals...which really starts to bring the painting to life. I did get a lovely glow in the shadows and vase. I could have left more whites, but I can scratch some of those in later.
My hour is disappearing but I have two wet paintings at my feet. Now I pick up my studio journal and a nice juicy pen which writes very quickly and allows me to keep my touch very light. My musings involve the work at hand as well as any perceived miracles I have witnessed which may be spice for another painting. Yesterday's walk was filled with a magic spectacle. I follow a trail through the woods to a very small creek, check out the frogs and the fish and then start home. That mornings I had just popped out of some rather dense underbrush when a huge heron came flapping by me, not ten feet away. He didn't even see my, but was sailing along the creek bed, probably also looking for fish and frogs. He was so majestic looking slowly flapping his great wings, legs tucked up. Amazing. I could hardly breathe. He disappeared around a bend in the creek, but I kept looking for him as I walked back along the trail. Now I know he lives there and I'll be looking for him.
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