Without A Thought

LET THE GAMES BEGIN!

I drew in Chocolate Mice free hand, nice and loose. For reference,I searched my stashes for the scaled drawing I'm almost sure I did, but found nothing. So I jumped in without a thought and drew from the photo I shot in Greek Town. The mice multiplied. The lines were lively. The painting would never be as fresh as it as was as I drew spontaneously, with no plan and nothing resolved. The draw-in took about a half hour.


Did you ever notice that your first efforts are the best? And after that it all goes down hill as you begin figuring out what comes next? When the colors are being laid in, that's when the juggling act begins. One mark calls for another. What's it going to be? Where's the foreground, mid-ground, background? What's the palette? What's going to balance the composition, make the subject "sit?" A whole lot of questions pop to mind. The worst kind. The ones requiring judgment. If too many of the answers come from training and not enough from the heart, you could lose the life. The painting quits breathing. That's what happened to Summer Shade. I had to shake it up to try to get the life back. I want to avoid that with Mice.

Short painting sessions to good tunes is the way to go. No time for dwelling. Flat paint. No build up of thick texture due to too much thinking, analyzing and correcting. I wonder if I can I make a painting with the wonderful unfinished, not overworked qualities of a sketch--at least in appearance?

LOOSE ENDS

A friend asked me yesterday where the Fall colors were in Autumn Grasses? Well they're not on the Sassafras trees I was painting. I took another look out the window as I went to finish it up with some yellow,gold, red and highlights. The leaves that hadn't turned red-burgundy were definitely bluish in comparison to the other trees around. There wasn't all that much yellow needed. It's quite possible that the oddity of the blue, red and pink is what attracted me--also the fact that Honey said landscapes weren't me?

He really knows how to push my buttons. He may be right, but I do think the little drawing/painting came out okay even though it's done on that crap canvas board. Today I varnish. After that market, flu shot and mail The Compromise, Sam's boat.