It's not a blizzard and I'm blogging anyway

I came home from work tonight, eager to paint, to learn that not only did we not have heat, but the boiler was spewing water all over the basement floor.

So we turned off the water in the house, borrowed a wet-vac, and put in a call to the plumber.

Meanwhile, it's freezing cold in the art room, and even if it wasn't, I'm such a colossally messy painter that I can't imagine making art without running water. I'm huddled under a blanket with the dogs instead.  Who needs heat when you have hounds?

Here's another of last weekend's finished paintings:

I started with one of those veiled black and white backgrounds - painted the green shape, and stamped/splattered some blue acrylic ink. It was a long journey from here to the final version.  I got lost a long the way a few times.

 For the next layer, I rolled some quin gold paint onto the gelli plate, scribbled into it, and then laid the painting on top to pull a loose monoprint.

I scribbled on top with something black.  Ink maybe.

Naples yellow was added to the white areas.

I stamped on some white paint with a homemade stamp...

...then made some long drips of dark teal paint, and added more scribbles with a fine tip marker.

Things were getting a little crazy, and I missed documenting a few steps, but I think I did some veiling with white, then stamped some green dots in the middle.  It was looking like a hot mess and I wanted to cover up a lot of it, so when it was dry, I carefully taped down two orb-shapes cut from paper.  Using them as masks, I painted black over one and green over the other.  It was frightening, so I quickly added thin layers of yellow and white paint over the black.

It was getting kind of muddy, so brighter and more opaque color went on next - extending the green area, adding the bright blue, and stamping some darker yellow in the upper left. The orange circle was drawn with crayon.

I decided that lower right bit was way too busy, but also not very distinct.   I honestly can't remember if I scrubbed some of it way, or just veiled with with layers of orange, but I made it disappear.  The whitish area on the left is actually light blue.  The black outlined shape is cut from paper and glued onto the surface.

Here's a close up of the yellow bit that I really love. I used a foam sheet that has little tiny circles carved into it as a stamp.  You can see some of the lower layers of paint through the circles.

Though I've forgotten doing this, at some point I must have smooshed on some matte medium for texture, as you can see in this close up.

After I glued it to the board, I extended the black outline over the edge with paint.

  

I was really ready to give up on this one a few different times along the way, but now I quite like it.  I'm getting better at pushing through the ugly stages.

Wish me luck pushing through the ugly stages of home ownership tomorrow when I have to pay the plumber!