Paint Party Friday

Remember this painting from last week - the one I didn't know how to finish?

Well first of all, THANKS for all your great comments, suggestions, support and encouragement.  It was fun to read everyone's ideas.  I've been staring at this painting for weeks, and my "muse" was telling me to cut it into little pieces (because I find that most of my art is greatly improved by hacking it to bits).  My muse, however, is a little bit of a chicken and in danger of being stuck in a rut so I told her to shut up.

One of my problems with this painting is it's size - it's 18" x 24" - waaaaay bigger than anything else I create.  Trying to draw, paint or collage a central image was intimidating because it meant doing it on this scale.  If this was a nice little 8 1/2" x 11" journal spread, I'd feel much more comfortable.

Hey wait...how about I PRINT OUT my photo of it on 8 1/2" x 11" paper....

It was far less intimidating this way not just because of it's familiar size, but also because if I hated the outcome all I had to do was print another copy and try something else.

So here's what I did on the small sheet (I left my pen on there for scale)

I masked off part of the background with circles and painted the rest of it brown, then finger painted some white circles into the wet brown paint.  I lifted off the mask to let the background show through.  It was kind of ugly.  Then I painted some card stock with turquoise and white paint and cut out some circles and glued them down and drew around them with a white sharpie paint pen.  It was okay, but still felt like it needed more layers, so I painted a newspaper with gesso and turquoise paint, cut out circles and rings, glued them down and drew around them with brown sharpie and white gel pen. Sort of chaotic, but fun.

Moving on to the big painting, I still wasn't ready to paint directly on top of it, so I flipped my big pad to a blank piece of paper and painted some very rough flowers with brown paint and then highlighted them a bit with white paint.  After they dried I cut them out and placed them on the big painting.  Lame.  I painted more brown and white flowers on a sheet of newspaper, cut them out and laid them down. It was getting better, but I wanted more.

When in doubt, add more circles.  I found an old piece of painted paper that I'd done with turquoise and gold acrylic inks and black sharpie.  I cut it into various size circles and rings and played around with the placement.   Kind of liking this.

I had everything lightly secured with masking tape and was tempted to leave it that way indefinitely in case I changed my mind.  But I'm getting tired of worrying about this painting.  I'm ready to commit and move on.

Several layers of gel medium later, I ended up with this piece (click to enlarge)

It's still a little crazy, and I don't totally love it, but the process was fun.  I stuck it in a cheap poster frame and hung it on the studio wall for now.  We'll see if I get used to how BIG it is.  I still think I might just cut it up and use it for post cards.  Perhaps you'll see a piece of it arrive in your mailbox one of these days!

BONUS ROUND - WANT TO PLAY ALONG?

Show me what YOU would have done with this background.

Click on the above image to enlarge it, then save it to your computer and print it out. 

Leave a comment here, or on next week's PPF with a link to your creation and I'll figure out how to do one of those cool side-bar lists with all the links to your work.

Thanks to WrightStuff who suggested this last week

and thanks to our PPF co-host Kristin who offered free downloadable original art papers on her blog all summer long and is totally cool with me swiping her idea.

Happy Paint Party Friday everyone!

Be sure to check out what Eva and Kristin and the rest of the PPF gang are doing this week!