In my post two days ago, I mentioned that there was one start I had going that was basically mud. I thought it might be fun to have a progression painting here. Mind you, I have no idea if this is going to work out or not. Ready? Here we go.

So here’s where it was at this morning when I began painting (the “mud” stage):

Yeah, not pretty. Because of the lights I have over my easel, this picture actually looks much brighter to my camera than it is to my eye. To me, I could see some of the colors in it, but they were pretty much all brown.

I did like the streaks in it, especially when I saw how the camera was seeing it. I wondered if I could emphasize those.

The answer was flat out, “No!” Boy, do I have a ways to go.

This next stage, I call “too much paint.”

Um, yeah. So far, this is not working out. There’s a time and a place for this, but so not what I was going for. Too much paint. See what I mean? Of course, this was after I had already given up trying to be delicate with the paint and just blasted it.

I did have to tell myself that the only wasted paint is the paint still in the tube. I think Picasso said that, but I’m not sure, so don’t quote me. A good coat of white paint has been known to do wonders for bad paintings too. I just had to keep calm.

I think I let it dry some at this point. When I came back, I was determined to make it mud again. I threw some purple and blue on it just trying to… I don’t know. I think I was trying to intentionally ruin it. For a moment, I had a picture that looked very much like my rose in space painting, but I didn’t want to do that again, so I scrambled it. (Scrambled it? Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s an official painting term. *grin*)

White paint, huh? I added some and really started tackling the canvas. Poor small thing.

I also tried “erasing” some of the paint. I have discovered some great effects by intentionally trying to lift newly applied paint from a dried underlayer with a clean, wet brush. That’s how the above picture ended.

I let the paint dry while I worked on something else for a bit. Then I came back.

The paint is very wet in this picture which makes the light really reflect off of it. But there’s definitely getting to be a beautiful swirl of colors here.

Tomorrow it’ll probably look totally different. I’ll do something to mess it up. (Yep, that’s me having faith in myself!)

I stopped painting for the day shortly after this, so this layer is drying. We’ll see what comes next. As I said, this might not even work at all, but we’ll carry on.

Until then, happy adventures!