day 43~weekend road walking

"angels walk in red shoes" 36x36

Every year a group of 10-11 artists known as Artzilla get together in Augusta to paint for 3 days and raise money for our local community arts center, Gertrude Herbert Institute. It is easily one of my favorite art events of the year. I think it's because I spend so much time by myself in my studio and I miss the interaction of other artists. It's one thing to get together with artists at shows or gallery openings or dinner or whatever. That's great. Don't get me wrong. But to hang out with them socially and paint at the same time? Damn! It just doesn't get any better than that. I love teaching and I love going to retreats to teach because the energy is just over the top. But when I'm there I'm not focused on my own artwork. At Artzilla it's totally self indulgent painting and existing on the energy of my counterparts. And let me tell you--these folks can paint! Holy Cats!! I'll have to do a blog post later this week introducing them all and letting you in on what they do. I mean, WOW.

So I stayed out of my head just enough to remember to take pictures of the painting I worked so that I can share a little bit of process with you. If you've taken my "release your creative spirit" painting class you may appreciate a little glimpse of how I apply those principles and techniques to what I do at home.

I started this one with black gesso and texture paste. then I threw some blue paint into the mix and let it dry for a while. 

then my usual red line drawings to set the background layers. I knew that I wanted this to be landscape'ish so I did a band of geometrics across the bottom. 

I wasn't feeling the black and blue ground so I went over the sky area with red because it makes pastels pop later on.

then it was a matter of starting the painting. You can see in the whites of her dress that it's never just one color. whites are everything from grey to yellow to light blue etc. Mixing color is one of my favorite aspects of painting. If you look closely you can see where I added a wing at this point. That was inspired by the way the shapes fell into the drawing. I hadn't planned that originally. 

working the face and her hair at this point. Still playing with moving color around. 

whenever i lay down a color, i try to move it around the canvas as much as possible. even if it's just an accent on a background shape. i think this keeps the painting looking unified.

i struggled with the back arm. i kept going back and forth about how it should sit. At this stage i really like the red in the background offset by the lavender. However...

i ended up painting all of the red out.  

I spent the next morning debating adding it back in but by then the colors had shifted too much and i would have ruined the piece if I'd had tried to go backwards.

and this is where I finished. I really love this piece. 

All of the paintings will be up for auction online and I will post a link as soon as I have it. The bid on this one is at $250. The live auction will be the first friday of October in front of The Book Tavern in Augusta. If you can't make it in person you can phone in your bid, but you've got to have your name on a bid sheet ahead of time in order to participate. If you want to add your name drop me a note and let me know. It's for a great cause and you will be getting a beautiful painting. Shipping for a painting this size is $75.00.

Off to walk Wally and then working on the book. Take a deep breath and smile in your soul today. 

Love.

staci