Moving Right Along...

So. Moving right along, we have another session with the bigass Agave, putting more information into the picture and adjusting the background. For some reason, I decided to put some squiggles of pink in the trees and that grew into flowers, but I haven't worked on it for 5 days, so it's been begging me to deal with some outstanding issues. Don't worry; they'll look great soon, haha! If I didn't leave a flaw in the painting, I might not be motivated to work on it. The flaw keeps drawing me in and irritating me like a loose eyelash in your eye.

Here's my latest version of Happy Bigass Agave. And tomorrow, I hope to post a photo of "Ghostly Pumpkins", a 12x12 oil on board that I painted for a cool painting concept blog, called Different Strokes From Different Folks. http://differentstrokesfromdifferentfolks.blogspot.com/

I've been meaning to do one of the inspirations for weeks, but always get busy with my two paintings here at home. But, David O. put in his AFG enews that Connie and Camille do Different Strokes, so I couldn't make a liar out of him, right?

It's a lot of fun to know that I can't take a couple of weeks on the painting, that it has to get done within a week of the photo being posted. With ACL this past weekend, I was sure there'd be no time to work on it. And I'm supposed to be packing for camping! And our revered Ms. G passed away today. I thought of her the whole time I was painting today. Those thoughts and the numerous phone calls and texts were barely a distraction. I guess I don't need absolute peace to paint anymore. I create my own peace.

Maybe I Should Have Left Well Enough Alone?

After some consideration, I decided that to leave the background and foreground in their abstract state denied the painting the cohesiveness that I'm used to bringing to my work. The lack of cohesion gave it the look of what I term "wall art", which is my decorator term for those things that you'll hang on the wall to decorate but can't be considered Fine Art. Another term, "Sofa Painting" is one you're perhaps more familiar with.

So, to keep this in line with my body of work, I decided that the agave should be planted in its garden and this is the beginnings of that.

More to come

Something Else Fun I'm Working On

I'm calling this "Tequila Sunrise", cuz it's an Agave cactus and you know agave has two wonderful uses: huge ornamental landscaping and really good tequila making. Imagine drinking tequila while gazing at an Agave...would that be as bad as eating a hamburger in front of a cow?

By the way, this painting is 48x48", which qualifies as Bigass.

And....We're Off!

It's time, ladies and gents, to move on to another great adventure. Please welcome my newest start, "Pierre et Ballon de Football", begun Tuesday night with a drawing and underpainting of Transparent Red Oxide, which is a very burnt umberlike red, and block-in continued yesterday with cooler colors, lightest lights and darkest darks. More blocking-in to come, but I'm so thrilled with this start that I wanted to share right away. Here's hoping I don't have another 3 month long painting on my hands!