...after Saturday's long run (35 km). The gods had mercy on us and the weather cooperated. The forecast called for a hot, sunny day; instead it was cloudy, cool and breezy. Yesterday, however, it was hot and sticky, very bad for long runs. We have to hope the gods will be with us (me) at the race too ...
So what's one to do after subjecting one's legs to such a treatment? Well ... paint of course!
A while back, I made a collage on an 8x8 canvass. I was not happy with the result, so I sanded the paper and gessoed over. I started looking at the shapes, waiting to "see" something. Since the paper was painted in reds and greens, I decided to look for flowers and I found a garden.
I wanted to push some of the flowers in the background to give a bit of depth, so I applied two layers of matte medium and created some texture, applied a nickel azo gold glaze (turned out to be too dark) and then made the mistake to brush some white. The idea was to wipe it off, which I did, but white is very stubborn. It did veil part of the painting, but it muted the colors too much. Alcohol did not help remove the white because of the layers of matte medium (they started peeling). Here is what happened:
The yellowish tone is part because I took the picture at night under artificial light. The thing is, I did not achieve what I wanted and I am not sure I like it enough to keep it. The jury is still out on this one...
I also bought Steven Aimone's
Expressive drawing.
I hesitate for a while, after all I have enough books to last me till retirement considering the limited amount of time I can dedicate to this activity. But I bought it because it discusses composition among other things.
These are the first automatic drawings I made:
I like them. The bottom one suggested a city landscape reflected in a body of water and the top one, a circus.
But this is just me....I am sure others see something different... isn't that the beauty of it all?
I also "found" her on one of the papers left over from the printing exercise:
When I "find" faces like this, it is always a surprise. When I paint "normal" faces, there is no surprise as they all end up looking the same and a lot like other painted faces out there.
And then it was the end ...of the weekend.
