As I grow in my craft, I'm finding myself more and more attracted to abstract paintings but also feel myself moving in that direction. The fact is that the best ideas often come from nowhere. And, I can either switch gears and ride whatever wave is granted me, or try like heck to make what I intend on making, often being disappointed in the end result.
So yesterday I began by creating a seriously saturated canvas. I has every major color family intermixing, shifting across a wash on my canvas. When all of that charged energy began to dry, I was left with a really truly colorful but dark piece. Here's a photo:
I was really happy with the composition, but not the amount of light or "white space". As for the underpainting, instead of a light blue violet or red or lilac, which I often lean on as my base color, I blended parchment with some Payne's Gray and created an inky wash with little areas of white and deep turquoise. Not sure why, but laying down paint on a darker surface was actually easier and required less paint to create the opaque look that I desired.
Three hours later, after adding back some calm, I had this on my canvas. Pretty excited. And the piece immediately took the form of a tree frog using a four-prong cane. Weird, I know, but I can't help what my head does.
It's the birthday of our great nation today, and if you served, please accept my sincere thanks and gratitude for ensuring the freedoms that our citizens are privy to. We are indeed blessed to have the ability to disagree with one another in a lawful manner, and to express our happiness and discontent in whatever peaceful means we chose. Thank you so much for willingly fighting and for offering your youth and comfort for my freedom.
Tomorrow we're headed to Charlottesville, Virginia, to show our kids where Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, lived much of his life. I hope it's not 200 degrees outside!