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Friday, June 24, 2016

Bucket List #3 - Don't Forget to Scoot

Don't Forget to Scoot   oil on canvas   48 x 24 x 1.5
Our grandkids are city-dwellers.  And, as such, they spend lots of time on the urban playground.  These kids are amazing!  Their playground skills know no bounds.

I have always wondered why I don't have a yearning for travel.  Quite perplexing, given my degree in French and my love for all things global.  You see, completely at odds!  While other folks my age are planning trips, and snapping multitudinous shots of foreign landmarks, I am quite content to be at my easel, which, for me, is the ultimate getaway!

And, so my bucket list series continues....and it is comprised of activities and movement.  Those are the things that give me thrills and chills.  Those are the things I don't want to miss.

Mystery solved.  

Thursday, June 9, 2016

The Grass Being Greener

The Grass Being Greener   Watercolor on Khadi   18 x 24.5
Yes...the grass is always greener on the other side...of the experience, of the life circumstance, and of the painting.  The sketch is complete.  The subject fairly well understood.  The paint, the brushes and the paper at the ready.

Each painting offers up a unique experience and, as part of the preparation, I try to visualize the finished work as well as to plan a step-by-step plan in order to achieve the desired results.  Khadi paper offers up it own qualities.  This is my third work using this wonderful paper and I am still maneuvering through its capabilities, as well as my own.  I liken it to driving a vehicle through an unfamiliar terrain, or in various weather conditions.  My first pass was a dropping-in of pigment wet-into-wet for the spots on this dappled bovine.  Dropping-in is something that Khadi does very well.  My next pass was to be a graded background wash.  Not easily undertaken.  A failure, in fact, as the ultra-absorbing paper does not allow for much pushing and pulling.  And so, my thrill came from the adjustments that had to be made in order to achieve the painting in my mind.  Difficult, but doable.

Indeed...the grass is always greener...how very appropriate! Oh, the glory of the process!

(Painting)..."It is a form of conversation, and just like a conversation it can turn out exciting, boring, ugly, beautiful, enlightening.  Like a conversation.  it can have unexpected turns, sudden discoveries and hidden subtext and periods of silence.  All this is what makes painting endlessly fascinating."
                                              Alex Kanevsky