Various progressions…

I am working on the big Meditation Garden and trying to remember to take progress pictures as I go along…in the beginning...before I started it...actually this may be another part of the reason why I wasn’t diving in so fast to getting it painted…it wasn’t just the WetCanvas project obligations hanging over my head…I think anyway…I am working through all of these feelings as I go…since much of this is so new to me…the ‘being out there’, the having vernissages…the being asked to paint a painting (this Meditation Garden)...like one of my other ones, but bigger…I am getting lost in my run-on sentence…

When I began painting this picture…I was worried about whether or not my friend would like it…I mean…she asked me to paint it…but what if she doesn’t like it when it is finished? These were my worries as I started out…what if whatever she is drawn to in the smaller version doesn’t come through in the larger one?...seeing as all my paintings turn out differently…I always end up taking different approaches to actually doing them…what if she just simply doesn’t like this one? Then that led to being worried about, if she doesn’t like it, then there will be awkward moments in all of ‘that’…she won’t want to say she doesn’t like it and I will be worried about whether she actually does…are these all normal feelings for doing commissions?

I knew these worries were slowing me down…keeping me from getting lost in the ‘doing of it’…I talked about these feelings with Cariño the other night while we were walking the dogs and he helped to clarify what I had begun working through…he pointed out that I paint because it makes me happy…it helps to keep me balanced…helps me deal with life…and if ‘doing commissions’ took that away, then I shouldn’t do commissions…or…I needed to look at it differently…which is what I had started to do…I will paint this painting without thinking that I am doing it with the explicit purpose that it will be sold to a specific person…I will do the painting like I have done all the rest…for the joy of it…I will talk to my friend before I even finish it and tell her that there will be no awkward moments…no money has passed hands…so there is no obligation…and whether or not she likes it…I will be the better for having done it…I will have learned and enjoyed myself…

So…with those worries put to rest...yesterday I dove into scooping paint from pots, squeezing it from tubes and using a variety of tools to move it about…getting totally lost in the process…now my only bother is having to wait for it to dry…doing one this big means having to work on it in sections…at least that is what I seem to be doing here…

This is the Meditation Garden painting that my friend likes and wants bigger...this one is 12"x16"...


















Doing the 'flowers'...layers and layers and blibs and blobs of colour...this was fun!...























Smooshing it all together into an organized riot of colour...how could I not have fun messing around with this much paint and color?...the hard part was stopping and not diving into it with my hands!...































And here is the finished Splatter Flow postcard...


















Now I am going back to doing a watercolour of a little Leatherback Turtle...I receive the Photo of the Month email from National Geographic and this month was a baby Leatherback making its way to the water...we'll see how it goes...