IsabeauxStudio

This evening in my late hour painting, I picked up a piece, "It's as if I was made from stone" (see earlier post), that I had been staring at for over a month.  The way I had left it, unfinished, was really starting to bother me as I didn't like the way it was going, wanted to do something to improve it.  The background didn't quite fit. In order to fix it, I first worked to blur out the center part of the background, and then worked to fill in the blanks. 

The picture at left is how I started this evening.  The image at right is how I ended it. (Though i do think I shot image at right a bit dark.)  It is still unfinished, but now I think it progressing nicely.

So my recent "Night Owlishness" has been both good and bad.  Good in the fact that I am painting again, albeit at the wee hours of the night, and bad obviously due to lack of sleep.  Tonight's piece with the working title of "Vena Coloura" has a softer touch in color.  I tried again to "pull out" a specific image, but didn't find anything that truly spoke to me.  So it will stay a piece in abstract.   I really like the soft colors, and the delicate defined edges

I have been struggling with getting to sleep over the course of the past two weeks.  Now back from a brief respite on the east coast with family, I am fully in the midst of work...again.  Work for me equals stress and lots of it.  A new symptom of my stress is the inability to fall asleep before 2 a.m.  When you are up at 6.30,  this tends to be a problem, and ends up catching up with me and fast.  I didn't used to have this problem, as usually I would be fast asleep once my head hit the pillow.  It looks like that has changed.

I started to paint at about 11.50 p.m.  This is what my insomnia looked like this evening.  Working with watercolors & yupo,  I applied the paint with no real direction, just following where it took me.  I often do this as a challenge to see what image I can pull out.  It is much like trying to see animal shapes in cloud patterns.  Tonight's "cloud pattern" was a treescape.

I kind of like going to bed with paint on my hands.

Ok, so it has been weeks, and weeks, and weeks since I have done anything utilizing a paintbrush.  The catalyst that got me back working was going to a local gallery show.  The work was varied, some amazingly clever, some just ok. The feeling that I came away with after seeing the show was mostly of annoyance.  Annoyance you ask? Yes absolutely, because being at the gallery shows me that others are doing what I currently wasn't... painting, showing... and that pissed me off immensely.  So I left the friends that I met there fairly early, and went home, and started to paint again which was what was needed and wanted anyhow.  My friends would understand.

So I started late that Friday evening.  What to paint?  Looking around my apartment, I spied flowers long dead in a vase that should have been tossed weeks ago. The texture in them was great.  As usual I started with photos first, and then started to sketch, fast and loose.  Just to get me warmed up and start to feel the paint flow again.  After 20 minutes I had the start of something.  The composition, not great, image stuck dead center (which is boring and unimaginative) but I didn't care.. it is just a start anyway.   This painting segued into the next fairly quickly. The first was cast aside, and the next one with a more interesting composition flowed pretty easily.  Again  I was working with yupo, which helps to explain the rich colors. 

Ok,  so I am acutely frustrated with my lack of workspace.  Yes my outdoor studio will be great on the weekends when it is warmer,  but I am not painting in the evenings after work like I used to.  I didn't realize how much I utilized my studio during the week until now and I really feel the lack of it.

So as a temporary measure until I can figure something else out,  I have dragged one of my outdoor tables, indoors- and set that up. Yes, it is in the middle of everything. Whatever.  So finally I got to painting last Friday, I started at 11pm, and was up until 2 a.m.  I really must buy a clock for the living room.

 I am working trying to finish the piece, "It is as if I was made from stone," and was painting badly. Very badly.  The good thing was that it was on Yupo (as described previously) and if you don't like something, you can just wipe it away.  Which I did, multiple times.  By the end of the weekend, this is where I left off.

 You can see on the left and right sides at top, where I have wiped the paint away, leaving the initial simple sketch.  The dark texture at the top center, looks really great but I don't think it goes with the rest of it.  I will probably change it as I further complete the piece.

Tune in later, as I am off to paint now, I will post the next round.  I am sure the whole thing will completely change again.