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...
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...
♥
Have a great Sunday, everyone, and upcoming week !
I'll be in the basement painting if anyone needs me ~ (just yell really loud) ~ ;^)
♥ ♥ ♥