Tonight was painting night. When I sat down to look over my (extensive) list of paintings in progress i knew I didn’t want to work on any of them. So, I resolved to kill two birds with one stone: I would clean out my palette of all the great colors I no longer am in love with and start some abstracts.

abstract2This was my first attempt. I had some green and purple on my palette that I no longer use (I tend to mix these colors now.) So I mixed them up and started applying, intending to cover my paper. I got so entranced by the way the colors flowed, I stopped and just added some stones to see what kind of texture developed. I’m not sure what is coming from this, but it is interesting.

abstract1Take two was a little more elaborate. I have some textured paper that I like to use. I put it down and applied paint on top of it. Then I added salt and some more rocks. We’ll see what shows up when it all dries.

Two abstracts seemed like enough of a start, so I moved to work on a couple of paintings that were sitting around needing finishing touches. Nothing much to show there, just a few brush strokes added.

Even after all this I hadn’t had enough painting this evening. I wanted something BIG and BOLD and SILLY! So I dragged out an ice painting background that I knew wasn’t going anywhere exciting, spent about two seconds thinking, and sketched what I saw.

sketchThis hit the spot. I might make a few more tweaks to enhance the theme, but it’s just what I wanted to do. A quick painting with big strokes.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh…