I hope everyone is having a wonderful weekend!
I am steadily painting for the upcoming show, and have truly missed blogging ~
I had to participate in "Pink Saturday", though, and I definitely have something PINK to show you...
First, I want to apologize to all who have left me comments and messages that I have yet to respond to...for days I have not been on the computer AT ALL...not even for a minute; (not to check e-mail, not to check the bank balance, no Facebook ~ nothing, nada, ZILCH) which is a "first" in a very long while!
I used to be a much faster painter...with increased acceptance of boo-boos and such, it seems I am so much S-L-O-W-E-R getting the actual painting done...
I used to drive myself crazy, being such a perfectionist and SO picky with what I was painting; now, not so much ~ however, this particular painting had a corner that was just NOT working...everything else was transparent (watercolor) and going well, but one corner (which I had not drawn anything in, really ~ I was just kind of winging it, but it was leaves, so I didn't think I could mess those up...(I did).
...To make a long story short, I totally changed colors a couple of times and it just got heavier and heavier looking.
It didn't look like it belonged with the rest of the painting.
Pickiness re-surfaced, and I was ready to throw it away; then I had an idea ~ collage might save it.
And collage it I did.
I'd recently bought a little French pamphlet from 1877 on eBay ~ (an almanac, not really a piece of history that would be missed if I tore it up) ~ thinking I would use parts of it in a painting of the stack of cups I photographed earlier this spring...it would work with this! The pink of the lilies was so intense; HOT pink, really, that I got the phrase "Hot August Night" in my head...and it got me to thinking what a hot August night in Southeast Missouri would be like...(sans AC) ~ I had already painted in a firefly (I'd recently read that fireflies were disappearing from some areas, and have been kind of on a firefly-kick; check this site out ~
What else?... CICADAS...by mid-August here they start their droning by noon (earlier on they're only sounding off in the evening, and it sounds pretty cool, for a while) ~ getting louder and louder, enough to drive a person a little batty ~ so along with the watercolor-painted cicadas collaged on, I put in text from the almanac that had to do with cures for insomnia...melancholy...the phases of the moon, and so on.
I also put in a big golden moon, painted with Lumiere acrylics...
I had fun.
SO ~ all that said, I will show you the finally finished painting that was visible in my photo of my painting space last weekend...
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Here is the detail of the firefly...(we signed up to log our firefly-sighting...only one so far in our yard this year! (That we've seen; for this Museum of Science survey you only look for 10 minutes or so once a week.)
So sad if this little beacon-of-summer does disappear...
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Have a great Sunday, everyone, and upcoming week !
I'll be in the basement painting if anyone needs me ~ (just yell really loud) ~ ;^)
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