I Can't Stop Painting!

A little more free time has meant a lot more awesome creative time just for playing around!  Yay!

I have had this ugly painting staring at me for many months:

A total failure and I just didn't know what to do with the canvas.  It sat on the floor of my studio just taunting me with its absolute hideous-ness.

So late one night, sometime after midnight, I decided it was time to reclaim the canvas!

I covered the face and most of the patterning with black and white gesso, and some red acrylic paint.

Then a layer of tissue paper, mist, and paint.  And I went to bed.

In the morning I decided to paint a flower.

I was pretty stoked with how it turned out.  But I stared at it for a while and finally decided to add a bit of text that kept rolling around in my head.

I love it!  Right now it's propped up on my bookshelf looking back at me and it feels like the beginning of a promise to myself, you know?

Well, after my husband saw the flower painting, he said, "I want a painting!"  Being a good wife, I got right down to work.

I had Rothko rolling around in my head when I painted this:

And I had my bow tie wearing husband...

...in mind when I added the text to the painting.

For the next painting I returned to that big red flower. 

I had posted the photo of the painting in process (when it was just the flower) on my Facebook page and gotten so many raves about it, I started thinking that maybe I should have a painting that was just the flower without the text.

So I painted a new version.

Changed up the center a bit and made it a simple four-petal flower.

Here's a close-up peek at some of the texture:
 

This next canvas got a face lift.  After finishing the face (no picture, sorry) I didn't like it.  So I whited it out...

...and sketched in a new face.

And finished it off!

Here's a close-up of the face:

You can see that the painting is done on top of book pages.

I love the way the background turned out.

I've ordered an easel.  Painting these canvases flat on a table is leading to big surprises when I tip them up.  I figure it's time for an easel.  I'm anxious for it to arrive!  And hopeful that some nicer weather could mean doing some painting out of doors!

There are two things that I want to do a lot more of this year: painting on canvas and doing some life sketching in my sketchbook.  I'm doing pretty well on number one.  It's time to start doing number two!

Thanks for stopping by!

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P.S. I'm going to be teaching an all day mixed media painting workshop at The Ink Pad on April 16!