Serendipipaint

One Saturday morning not too long ago, when I had finished a painting in watercolor class and had about 30 minutes worth of time left, the instructor suggested that I take a small piece of watercolor paper (a little larger than postcard size) and make a "monoprint" of sorts, pressing the paper into the wet mess in the middle of my palette. I did that, spritzed some water from a spray bottle onto it all, dragged the edge of another stiff piece of paper though some paint and scraped it along the painting, ending up with a, well, mess. It kind of looked like a lighthouse on a cliff to me, so I refined it a little bit, tossed it into my bag, and forgot all about it.

Tonight, while doing a little cleaning I ran across it, and decided to play around with colored pencil on it. Oh yeah, the word of the evening is "EUREKA!!" I'd played with colored pencil over watercolor before on cold press paper and on 90# hot press, and was never all that impressed. This is on 300# hot press, which has just enough soft tooth to remind me of Stonehenge paper, so the pencil goes on just perfectly. And while it is not strictly lighthouse-ish to the seasoned lighthouse keeper or collector (unplanned and just out of my head), it strikes me as a mighty fun way to spend a couple of hours with art supplies! It scanned fairly dark, and I never could get the color to adjust properly, so lighten it up in your mind, and you'll be on the right track. I do wish I'd scanned it before I did the color pencil work, just to show the difference.

I've finally started working on the painting of Miss Vanilla Cupcake, feeling my way along with composition and color. Right now I seem to be having a color crisis -- I can't decide which I really prefer -- glazing or mixing the colors on the palette and NOTHING seems to be turning out right whichever way I go. So, I'm going s-l-o-w-l-y!! Must be tough to have such terrible problems, huh? Yep. I'll tell you folks, I'm grateful every single day for my problems, 'cause they are few and the ones I have are small ones.

And, actually, life is going pretty good right now. We took down the art show the other day, and I have three more pieces going into another show that opens Friday. (I'll post photos!) A local shop is carrying one of my paintings now ("Other People's Stuff") and has started out with two copies of my Gossip print on commission. There are FOUR paintings on the drawing board in my room, and another pastel workshop with Paul DeMarrais is in the very near future. It's an interesting time! We'll see what the future has in store!

P.S. The thing that appears to be a small flag flying off of the top of the lighthouse is just a blob of paint. It makes the whole thing look a bit like a castle on the cliffs, rather than a lighthouse, doesn't it!? Well, it's just whatever you want it to be. Isn't that nice?

;-)