Twenty!

I don't always know how these paintings will go. There is some planning, but there are all kind of decisions to be made as you go. For this one I had the idea of looking into the clouds and seeing shapes. Somehow they just had to be dogs and cats. After painting these, the idea for the earth below came. Maybe it would have been good with grass too, but I liked the idea of our pets frolicking somewhere up there, with many balls to chase and shoes to chew. 

This one was done Wednesday.

Then yesterday I decided I should make some winter paintings too.

This one is based on the many sunrises I've seen on my way to work. One perk of working all those 12 hour shifts was that the drive often included the most spectacular sunrises and sunsets. There is one particular spot, coming over the last hill before my workplace, that I always tried to imprint in my mind. How accurate memory is, I don't know, but I think this captures the essence of it.

 I managed to do two paintings today, including another winter one. With this one I knew I wanted a child looking up catching snow flakes. I remember a picture of my niece when she was little, and how blissful she looks at the white world and the snow flakes coming down. That was the idea I started with. I did several little sketches in the past week on how I wanted the child to look and trying to figure out what to put in the background. I'm not sure why, but it was more difficult than I imagined to get it right. Then there was the decision on how big to make the child. It helped to keep thinking about the theme, sky gazing, so the sky should still be an important piece, and decided to keep the background simple with just a few vague trees.

On to the next one. I liked the previous sunset I did, so I decided to do another one. I had previously tinted the white board with yellow, and used a thin layer of yellow and orange glaze over it. It must be the watercolorist in me to like that transparency. So far I've just done trees as the land, so I decided to make this one a city. Then I was surprised at how the yellow showed through in little dots, due to the roughness of the board. I left a bunch of these since they look like city lights.




That happened to be number 20. Five more to go before being halfway done. This is a lot of work! I'm just trying to keep going, have fun with it, and not stress out about it. So far I have done pretty good on not stressing. I actually don't mind putting off housekeeping till I'm done painting. It has been fun trying out new things and learning, coming up with new scenes, and hopefully producing something presentable. +It is also a process of letting go; I tend to keep picking at a painting, but I think I'm getting better at just letting go. Knowing when it is done, when to leave it alone, let it be and sent it out into the world is hard!