painting experiment v2.0

As a result of friends giving me a bunch of fantastic oil painting supplies for Christmas and a buy-one-get-one-for-a-penny canvas sale at Aaron Brothers, I was all ready this weekend to try painting again with higher quality paints and brushes.  Tonight was far less of an experimental 'let's see how the paint spreads on canvas and what the colors look like' experience, though there is still a TON for me to learn still (like buy protective gloves to wear when washing brushes with turpentine).  With no actual training or research, I'm figuring most of it out by trial.  Don't like how a brush applied the paint?  Scrape it off and try again with a different shaped brush.  Or just grab the other brush and change it.  I'm still doing incredibly abstract painting, so smooshing up something and blending it in doesn't really matter so much, its not like it has to look like anything particular when it is done. 

So I spent a few hours tonight painting, and it was very different from the last time.  Tonight's painting was cathartic.  I don't know if it was therapeutic in a now-I-feel-better sense, but I do think it was a good way for me to creatively express how I feel right now.   Even though I wasn't listening to the Hercules playlist I was still singing along with my Zune at top volume (my neighbors must hate me) and this time I had a clear idea of what I wanted to convey in my painting and what colors I wanted to use, without knowing quite what it was going to end up looking like.  I just started applying color, then mixing colors, then adding depth or highlights here and there.  At one point I tried doing something, didn't like it, scraped off most of the paint I had just applied with a palette knife and changed what remained with a fan brush.  I only used the fan brush for six strokes all night, but I think they were the most important ones.  When I stepped back to look and decide what to do next, I instantly knew it was finished.   I didn't plan or envision the end result when I started, but clearly this was the place I was meant to go.   

This one I'm actually proud of.  When I look at it, I think it feels the way I felt when I painted it, if that makes sense.  It doesn't feel forced or over thought.  The last minute change with the fan brush made the painting  _so_ much better.  In a way part of my satisfaction with the painting is that the end result is a surprise to me, like opening a random oyster and finding a pearl.  I had no idea what it would look like, I didn't TRY to paint this, but I did.  It just feels very organic and natural.  

After coming upstairs to wash my brushes (I paint in my garage) I went back downstairs to just look at it and try to take it all in. Twice.  Like if I looked at it long and hard enough, I could absorb it permanently into my head and heart.  Then after doing a little reading online about oil painting I decided to bring it into the house to dry versus being in the cold and dark garage.  I am planning to hang it in my bedroom once it is dry, and I'll be heart broken if it doesn't cure well. 

I would let people see this painting but it still feels too personal to try taking a picture with the D70 to put on the blog.  Sorry.