Put your brush down..

"Put your brush down and step away from the easel", I said out loud to an empty studio. I lifted my gaze to take in the marbled blue sky, and new growth green. There's plenty of flower litter that didn't get processed before the winter. I can go out and do some snipping. The deck furniture can come out of the shed. Hmm, the shed. I've had to bang on the door, wait respectfully (ha!) then toss a rock through the open door. Nothing. Not a sound until I step through the door. That's when she flies over my head and I curse. I haven't seen her babies, but I know the nest is up on the top shelf, probably cozy in the car emergency kit carton. It's got a mylar blanket which the family of squirrels must prize as their ultra-modern winter rental. Well hopefully they're out now as I should be.
It's  time for me to stop messing around, put on my shoes and go outside.

My Millie

Andrea in Wanderland

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to."
"I don't much care where –"
"Then it doesn't matter which way you go.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland 

It had been an ideal Sunday. We meandered, we shopped, we sat outside as we ate our lunch.

"Sure, I'll do a little painting", I thought. "What shall I paint?" It didn't much matter as long as I could experience pulling the colors along the paper. I happily filled the larger-than-usual page with random images.

Gee-o

I'd been struggling with a painting of a fence and field of wildflowers in painting group. It was a tricky composition with perspective, lots of greens and large spaces to fill. I continued to work on it when I got home, but ended up tossing it after a half-hearted attempt to salvage it. I don't think I was very into it to begin with. In fact, it took me quite a lor of Googling before I settled on that photo reference.

It didn't occur to me until the next morning, that I might change the frustration energy by just sitting down to a blank page to play. I have found in the past, that making shapes, dragging colors around  the page, using a variety of mediums, is very freeing. Little thinking goes into my fun fest. Because I think of it as practice, there's no pressure to produce something frameable.
It's just like how I cook; I grab a little of this and some of that, and add a pinch or a dollop. It's a very intuitive process, and it always comes out delicious.

Building Birches

Well, I am loving this gesso and the acrylic white paint. I enjoy the lightness and ease of watercolor on paper, but am also attracted to the sculpting properties of oils and acrylics. Sooo-I had the beginnings of a bunch of birches not going anywhere. I gessoed the entire page of 200lb watercolor paper. When the gesso dried, I painted on top of it with watercolor, then proceded to heap tons of acrylic on it, which was very satisfying. The paper became heavier, less absorbent and textured almost like stucco.

Watercolor: Saving the fails

Gesso is used to prime canvas for oil paint or acrylic. I watched a demo using it on paper for watercolors and mixed media. It was applied as a wash over the paint to create texture and mood.

These two pictures hadn't worked out the way I had hoped and I had put them aside. Then I decided to apply a gesso wash to them to see what I would get. I had nothing to lose I was going to trash them.

I applied the gesso carefully over the whole page. When dry, the image had softened. It left a sort of white gauze over the page and a gritty texture. Then I was able to go back and bring up selected parts. I used watercolors, watercolor pencil, pastel pencil, and/or some white acrylic.

As watercolor is so unforgiving, this is a way to get new life from a picture.