Updates

Been kind of a slow week. Painted yesterday, didn’t love the outcome and the pictures I took were too blurry, later in the evening when trying to spray one of the dogs to get them to quiet down I ended up dowsing both of the current works in progress and ruining them…so, back to the drawing board.

The one I was working on yesterday was a landscape piece, it started out with the purple spot shown on the middle right and I was going to make a Seuss type flower out of it, but instead decided it would become a moon after I used an Orange Pansy to make the mountainy scene below it instead of just ground. Later I added Purple Pansy for the sky over a mix of Orange Marigold and Yellow Pansy. Lastly I put a splash of blue from the Purple Pansies on the land to try and make a water feature…all in all it was probably for the best that it got splashed.

Sorry this picture is a little on the blurry side.

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This is what it looked like after getting splashed.

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And this is what it currently looks like after I stripped away the bottom half and then accidentally sprayed some Gaia’s Gold(a veggie wash/cleaner) that hit the top of it. My intention was to reuse the top half and do this image of a cloaked figure I have in my head, but I think I will be doing that on another piece now and will probably start fresh on this one. I don’t know if it translates in the picture, but here the spots are an almost fluorescent green.

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The other project I have been working on was my attempt to do something other than a mix of blues and purples. I used the Orange Lily, Its Anthers, Orange Marigold and Yellow Pansy for the four corners and then because it was there, Raspberry juice for the center from some berries that Lisa was working with. It made for an interesting, bright and shiny color but really didn’t do anything for the piece.

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Lastly a quick update on my science experiment for color storage. I accidentally…see didn’t pay any attention too, water the Orange Lily I bought and it dried up within a week and most of the leaves fell off along with the majority of the Anther’s drying up and becoming useless, so, I went and checked the samples I had placed in the fridge and the freezer, the Anthers were as perfect as the day I put them in there, the leave seemed to be holding up as well.

At present I can say refrigeration will certainly help prolong the usefulness of Anther’s and possibly of petals as well. More on this as time passes.

Oh and last but not least, I have been discussing having a Canvas Sketchbook made with a local canvas stretcher, it looks like my Canvas Palette Book will soon be a reality.

Project #6 Blue Eyed Beast

This piece, originally seen here as a work in progress

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is now completed. While I am still trying to capture the combination of yellows and blues that I saw when I was doing my first test piece, this is where I ended up going.

I realized when I had the above that the yellow pansy was not having the same effect as the Black Lily anther, but I was enjoying the abstract cloud effect of the purple pansy. The swirling arms coming out of the mass gave me the idea of completing the piece in blue and then putting a purple creature over it.

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In the end, it was a little darker purple than I had been going for and it took some playing around to get it to where I liked it. I’d still like to see a little more definition in the beast and I have really struggled to get his blue eye to pop.

I added the planet at the bottom of the piece to give it a nice invasion feel and then I decided his creepy clawed arms weren’t enough so I started adding what I thought would be bombs…turns out I might have been slightly more influenced by our trip to see Sperm! The Musical the night before then I realized as it now looks like the creature is shooting his load at the planet/egg beneath him.

Art is always subjective, so see it as I intended or as it turned out or however you like, I just hope you enjoy it.

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Project#5 Purple Sun, Purple Flowers w/Purple Pansies, Yellow Pansies & Black Hollyhocks

This is the first piece I am considering completed of sorts. I again set out to accomplish the vision I had of mixing yellow’s and blue’s and seeing what I could do with it, only to put the Black Hollyhock into play and changing the scope of the piece.

Most of the painting is done with the purple and yellow Pansies to create the blue atmosphere, there is a strip of Black Lily along the bottom and then the sun and flowers were done with Black Hollyhock.

In the end I think there are some really cool aspects to it and I am starting to learn more of what certain flowers are going to do, plus I think it shows the potential of the medium to do more than abstract hues and tones.

However, my thumbs were thoroughly sore afterwards.

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The hazy butterfly shape is from a Yellow Marigold, I plucked from the parking lot of Best Buy in Coeur D’alene, my son shook his head when I stopped and opened the car door, reached out, grabbed it and drove away. I don’t have a problem…just a passion.

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