Monday, December 10, 2018

New Painting: Mystic Journey

"Mystic Journey", 10x10" mixed media on wood panel. Available. 

This is me trying to do a monochromatic painting.

When I started, I was thinking light grey and white, maybe a bit of metallic (that orange is actually bronze. It doesn't photograph well). My original thought was to put some darks and colour underneath that may show through in little bits here and there, but overall it would be white. It appears I am not in a state of mind to do that right now. I put the dark parts on.... then I liked it too much to cover it all up.

It's not an unusual thing for me to end up with something totally different than I was intending. Since I work completely by gut instinct, once I'm in the zone all plans go out the window and I just follow what is happening on the piece.

I tried to explain this to someone recently and they just didn't get it. He thought I had been working from photos when I was painting my recent landscapes. Even showing my process videos didn't convince him... I'm pretty sure he still thinks I'm working from photos.

My plan for 2019 is to start doing live stream painting sessions. I imagine these will be long and boring, and I'll have no viewers after the first couple are done. Posting my time-lapse films always get a great reaction...I get the feeling people are curious how things come together. But it can really take a long time to get things just right... when it's sped up to 4x the speed it seems like it would be much easier to watch. I'll give it a go anyway, and see where it takes me. At the very least I can answer whatever questions pop up from people watching.

My open studio last weekend went really well... thanks to everyone who came out. It was great to see so many old friends, along with a smattering of new faces. Quite a few pieces went off to new homes. I realized, as I put everything away, that every year I add to my collection of original works on paper that go into storage and only get pulled out for this one event. They proved to be quite popular again this year. I think I may try having a monthly "flash sale" of paper pieces at a deep discount... that way my young collectors can snag something at a great price, and I can clear out some space. Win/win, right? 

Calendars  featuring my abstract work are still online, for anyone who may be interested in ordering one. I've got about 35 left... given that the Canada Post recent job action made sure I couldn't guarantee they would arrive in time for Christmas, I consider this a huge win! Having an e-commerce site makes life so much easier... I remember when I did this in 2015 I had a spread sheet trying to keep track of orders and which ones I had shipped... it was a bit stressful as I was sure I'd miss something. Now it's all there on the website, and I can mark them shipped as I send them out, and it keeps track of how many I have left! Oh the wonders of technology!!

I'll be here next week, but I'm going to take a couple weeks off from the blog over Christmas. I need a break... and I also need some time to figure out all the little technical details of the things I want to launch in January. I'll keep y'all posted when I figure out what my schedule will be. Any ideas of things you may want to see? Leave me a comment, and I'll see what I can do. 


No comments:

Post a Comment