Fighting back

So my studio is set up in the basement of our new house and I’ve been struggling with the weather. It’s tough enough in the cold as the basement is hard to heat the way it’s currently set up. On top of that, its been flooded 3 out of the last 4 rain storms that have moved through. I finally won one with the last storm and kept the water manageable by putting sump pumps buried in the yard to get the water before it gets to the basement.

I finally broke down and set up a mini-studio upstairs in the room I have my office set up in. The disadvantage there is the fact that I have to be more careful not to get paint everywhere. Surprisingly this is a lot more limiting than it used to be for me. I tend to really get into it and have made it a habit to have my painting clothes and shoes so that I don’t ruin too much. I often find paint in my hair when things are going well!

To that end, I have at least half a dozen pieces I’ve started and needed to finish up on. Sometimes I like to let them sit while I think about where to go with them, but often I let my new ideas get ahead of me. Yesterday I decided it was time to catch back up and work on some of my experiments. After all, my word for the year is failure and I can’t get there if I’m afraid to experiment.

Both pieces started as texture experiments pouring paint in lines for things like tree trunks to give it more of a pop coming out of the canvas. The first piece here is a 16 x 20 canvas that the texture failed completely. I was too impatient and the paint more sneezed out of the bottle rather than poured. I eventually made a mess of it and used that as a base for a forest scene:

The second painting is an 8 x 10 – I’ve really begun to enjoy painting on this size of a canvas. I had a little better luck with the initial lines on this one. I decided to experiment with colors a little as well, but kept this one a little more basic giving it a bit of a spooky feel:

One additional painting to add here as well! On Thursday evening Donna and I went to a painting session at the church as part of a fund raiser. It was one of those were you are shown a sample painting and the instructor helps everyone paint that picture. Ours is the front door of the church itself, which was re-painted in the fall. I had no idea how this would go and it was a bit limiting as I usually am not so focused on a specific outcome. Even so, we had a good time and the outcome wasn’t horrible!