JANUARY CHALLENGE PAINTING #3 STAGE 1 AND 2

Yesterday I took the day off and went to a great party given by the Santa Clara Valley Watercolor Society celebrating 40 years of creativity!! Nava did a terrific job as the Emcee 'cause she's the prez. She received big accolades for the fantastic job she is doing which embarrassed the hell out of her, which was fun to watch. She deserved every compliment heaped upon her.

Today, back to the business of creating art. I toyed with the idea of going to a demo by John Salminen but I have seen him demo before, and the truth is, his genius in painting cannot be demonstrated in an hour or 2, so I thought I would be better served painting. I have his DVD from Creative Catalyst Productions and it is fabulous. Really gives one a plan for creating an abstract plus how to evaluate your painting as you go along as well as how to look at an abstract painting with some intelligence.

Back to painting #3. I am continuing to work on the kaleidoscope painting while I am working on this one. I pulled the following set of requirements: Composition....Triangular; Mother Color...Quin Gold; Design Element...Texture! I must be a magnet for texture but this will be the last one in this series as I duplicated the element only once. Amazing out of 3 pulls I got texture twice.

This image is pretty much triangular in composition already as the top of the head is cut off giving the upside-down base. The profile and jaw line give the other two sides. Her garment is another triangular shape. I decided to add repetition by putting triangle patterns for the background. I was curious if Tyvek would work as a collage material, so I created two sheets of splashed color - one warm skin tones and one mostly cool colors and did all kinds of textural tricks on the wet paint then let it dry. Stage one shows the drawing I did on regular 140 lb Arches cold press watercolor paper. I used a pitt pen in sanguine and just jumped right in drawing after making a thumbnail in my sketch book to see if I liked the general idea. I figured I was going to cover up everything so I didn't have to worry about mistakes. My drawing broke the face into shapes. Next I took a sheet of tracing paper and traced the drawing. Now I have my pattern for the collage pieces. I cut out the large shapes first and glued them down with diluted matte medium. I coated both the paper and the back of the tyvek. I'm not sure this is going to stick very well. I may need to explore other "glues" I will worry about that later. I started cutting out smaller shapes and sticking them down . The watercolor paper is looking messy but it will get covered up so I am not worried about keeping it pristine. I initially thought I would use some of my tissue paper collage with this but as I see it develop, I'm not sure how that will work. It is an experiment, so I am evaluating and adjusting as I go. So far, the mother color hasn't been used, but I think I will probably do a final glaze with it to unify the painting.

Now I have to go clean up the dining room and breakfast room of the gigantic mess I have created. I really start to spread out when I get going and keep looking for a clean surface to work on! It's fun when work is play.