FRENCHMAN WITH SHAPE, COLOR AND TEXTURE!

Today I sat at the Gallery. I was expecting to be alone so I was surprised to find the committee for CWA Annual Exhibit working in the kitchen, preparing the letters of acceptance and rejection to be sent out. I was treated to a slide show of the accepted entries which was playing on a laptop. I hope they make a cd available for purchase of these paintings.

Knowing I would have all afternoon to paint, last night I prepared a half sheet of watercolor paper with different textures in the heavy Utrech gesso. I had been experimenting with other acrylic mediums and was surprised that after they dried, if they were rewetted, some of them started to soften and dissolve. Gesso seems to stay hard once it dries. I used different stamps and stencils from my ever-growing supply. Once at the Gallery, I drew this stylized version of the Frenchman onto the paper and worked with my neutralized palette from Nita Leland's book. I am growing extremely fond of this combination of colors. I like this painting and had a very enjoyable afternoon painting bigger than a 5 x 7 inch mini! I want to try this again focusing on a stronger dominance of cool vs warm tones. I think they are too even on this one with no dominance of temperature. I may do two more...one with 80/20 cool vs warm and the other 80/20 with warm vs cool.

It was so easy to paint with the drawing decided, the color palette decided, the texture done. I had fewer things to concentrate on so less stress, yet there were still plenty of decisions to make to keep it interesting and surprises to experience. If everything was totally worked out in advance then the joy of discovery would have been gone. Today was the perfect balance!