My Week End

As part of being in the WildChild Gallery on Matlacha (mat-la-shay) FL, artists are asked (required) to demonstrate their painting, potting, basket weaving or whatever their medium at least two week ends a season. This is my week end. I couldn't have a lovelier place to sit and paint for two days. This is what my set up look like before I started painting for the day. I'm sitting on a dock on a canal that leads to Pine Island Bay. It is under a tent so we are sheltered from the sun but we can feel the breeze and enjoy the great view. A good friend and fellow w/c artist, Pat also happened to be on the deck with me and we had a grand time painting on yupo paper. It's an ideal surface to paint on when you have to work on something all day but still be able to chat with the people who come by to observe. It's easily corrected and if you don't like something you can wash it off and do it over. The little picture in the right hand corner is my painting of Pat painting. I think I tweaked it some after I took the picture so look for a better picture on my next blog.

Chess In the Park

Sometimes a painting started with a background and no preconceived idea is a good way to jump start creativity. I started this little painting on a quarter sized sheet of 140 # watercolor paper just as a warm up activity using colors wet on wet with "stuff" laid on it to create texture. When it was damp I did a little stamping and stenciling with checkerboard shapes. When it was it dry and removed the stuff it seemed to say "chess" to me. So I researched some shapes for chess pieces; with those in place I needed something as a center of interest and then I thought of all the scenes of men playing chess in the parks around Europe. This one with the light of a late afternoon sun seemed perfect for the colors in my painting and the tree shape that was made by the stuff that I laid on the wet paint.