Not dead

I spent most of Saturday and Sunday painting.  It's been a long time since I immersed myself this way.  I worked on 6 paintings simultaneously, and took pictures along the way.  I wasn't thinking about this from a blogging perspective - I just wanted to capture the transformation of each piece so I could reflect on it and learn from it.  But after a series of text exchanges with my friend Lynn, and after catching up on months and months of her blog posts (and reading this post entitled "doesn't anybody blog anymore?") I decided to share.

Here's one of the finished pieces.  It was created on 8"x 8" paper and then mounted to a wooden panel.  I decided to paint the panel sides after the paper was mounted.

The whole series of paintings came from a stack of black and white layered pieces that have been sitting around for months.  I grabbed six of them and added one random element to each, and then another element, and another, working in sequence until something started to emerge from each one.

Here's the evolution of the piece above.
(I don't have any process pictures of the base layer, but it was a series of black marks layered with white paint, created with the intention of painting over it.)

Dripped some crimson acrylic ink.

Added a light layer of greenish blue paint with a brayer. (Did not add pink to the left side, it's just weird lighting.)

Scribbled with a graphite crayon.

Rolled on some Naples yellow paint.

Drew some circles using a Naples yellow Neocolor crayon.

Partially covered the scribbles with more aqua paint.  Added some white veiling in the lower left corner.  This time I used a dry brush to apply the paint.  It's murder on the brushes to scrub like that, but I like the effect.

Doodled a thin crimson line with a colored pencil.

Did some more veiling with all three colors, partially obscuring the lines and circles and adding more depth.  Cut squares from painted paper and glued them on.

Of the six weekend paintings, I feel like three are finished.  I even hung them up.

Maybe I'll even blog about them.