Jan. 6,2011

Started 2 paintings. The oil painting is an idea I have had for a long time. Years ago we went up to Canada and after seeing Lake Louise we headed west to BC. Along the road we saw a black bear running with the deep woods to his north. Then camping in California we encountered a lot of elk. The figure will be my youngest son Thomas as he looks today. It started out pretty bad. The colors were awful and I was uninspired. Then I thought I wanted to lighten and brighten things up and knew I would add more paint tinted and brighter to the dark shapes. I started to add patches of lighter and sometimes darker blue to the sky and it morphed to me adding the same elements to the tree shapes and now the figures. I want them to shimmer. I want it to be fun and not real. I want it to be colorful and whimsical. I am showing 2 details and one of the whole painting. It is far from done. I foresee lots of colors added to deepen the darks and really brighten the lights. It is approx. 16 inches by 32 inches. Since it is board support I can really use a lot of paint. I had considered sanding it down and starting something else but I am stubborn. No masterpiece but a different sort of use of paint for me. I really don't like pointillism..but I suppose this has elements of that. but with a start of large dark shapes.
The watercolor is huge. Bigger than a full sheet of 140#. I cut some off a large roll of Fabriano. That is a pain..I have to move everything out of the middle of the studio and use whatever I can find as weights to hold the curling paper down so I can cut it!. Since it is 58 inches tall it is so cumbersome.
I will never buy a roll of watercolor paper again! Unless someone can give me an idea how to cope with it.
I started out just adding wet paint to wet support. Some salt, plastic wrap and let it dry for a few days. I like turtles and the large shape in the center kind of looked like one. I added the leaf shapes and think I will find more by painting around negative space. I wanted to see if I could do the dot thing on a large scale and see if it would hold up as well as it did on my tiny paintings. You know that does not always work. Of course it means a lot of dot making so this one will take a while. I want to keep the fresh bright colors of the watercolor medium and so I don't want to do too much glazing except to bring out the found shapes of leaves etc. I know I tend to keep many of the figures and the dots at the same value..but that is what I like to do..we shall see if it works on this humongous painting!!