July 27, 2010

River View, Yellow Face

First, the good news. It was a beautiful morning and the paint was flowing. I'd been thinking about the geometric shapes you just randomly find in nature and the wedge-shaped swatch of grass in the river jumped out at me.

Now, as happens often when I paint, I drop paint brushes. This time, focusing on the painting, not the brush, I picked the fallen brush up, wiped the sweat from my face, kept painting... and then realized the brush had dropped into a nice blob of cadmium yellow light. My gloves were covered in it, as the handle of the brush transferred the pigment to my hands. I wiped my face on my sleeve, just to see if any had come off on my face and my red shirt was coated in yellow. I was completely distracted by the certainty that I was covered in yellow paint and cut the morning's work short. At the car, with my box of wipes and mirror, all I can say is that it was much worse than I thought. Eight wipes later, I was down to just having completely yellow hair at my temples and a certain sallow look to my face.

July 21, 2010

Chaos and Kayaks

Out at Reilly's Lock, the Calleva campers were loading up kayaks, playing "Liar" (which is the cleaned-up name of the game they were really playing!) and creating general chaos. It was also raining, which provided a convenient reminder that oil and water don't mix -- spots of rain dropped on my painting and the oil lifted right off. I gave up on the scene.

July 20, 2010

Vultures

They were very creepy. The highlights on the left side of the photo here are due to paint shine, not color. When I do a little more work on the painting and retake the image, that should be cleared up.

July 14, 2010

Glen Echo Carousel, Rainy Day

This is the beginning of a new painting -- 24 x 36 -- at the carousel at Glen Echo. I'll be working on it more, a lot more, in the days to come.