Day 56 and morec

Collage, paint, acrylic ink, stamping...

Baseline abstract on water color paper with limited palette

Color-full baseline abstract on water color paper

I used the end of the paint brush in draw in the wet paint

Yesterday at the dog park, story below

Gracie approves of the new coat of paint on the backyard fence. It shows off her fur.

I find myself using black and white against a colorful backdrop more and more. Maybe this is my new voice, or maybe I need to let that go and move on to something else. Have to let it play out. To make the flower on today's tag, I stenciled with black paint on a white card stock and cut the flower out.

The new Expressions class with Ardith Goodwin and Shauna Meir is off to a roaring start. I have a canvas prepped in the studio, and did the 2 pieces of water color paper in the past 30 hours. I am back on a roll. We are to think about our point of view for each painting. What feelings do we want to convey? The discussions going on in the secret Facebook group are enlightening to say the least. One painter was fretting about what if the viewer doesn't feel your emotion? Did she fail? She had 3 replies to that, and one was mine. I said, in my opinion, she didn't fail. The lesson is telling us to paint with intention, with feeling so the painting has meaning to us, so the canvas comes alive. If the viewer doesn't "get it", it's okay. WE, as painters, put our thoughts and emotions into the piece, and that is what matters. Ardith replied that THAT is exactly what the lesson was conveying.

So for the first baseline, I used white, black and a red. Mixed tints and shades. What I was feeling after reading Twitter and the news is that I am sick and tired of "them vs. us". We are all Americans, there are grey areas, get over yourselves and your agenda, and let's move on. The second, more colorful piece is just about being happy, liking those colors. Used vine charcoal for the very first time on both, and really like it for this type of work. Will use it again.

Dog Park: the painter was in the backyard, and the dogs had been going nuts for over 2 hours. So I loaded them in the car around noon to go to the park, run off some energy. Dang it was hot. 90 degrees, no breeze. We ended up under the pavilion, and I had just filled one of the water bowls when Jake, bless his heart, stuck a paw into the cold water to splash it on the concrete. Then laid in it. Who is a dumb animal? Not my boy!
Linda