Snafu

Well, this evening’s post got tangled up in technical difficulties, so I will keep it uncharacteristically brief.

Enjoyed the fresh air today, which then started seeming weirdly extra fresh, and I finally realized my neighbor’s laundry vent was wafting directly into our entrance and filling it with the scent of their dryer sheets. Not quite the fresh air I was imagining, but made me laugh, so that’s a bonus.

Walked into the studio this morning to this terrible sight.

Since this may not be obvious to anyone who is not an oil painter, the above picture is evidence of my forgetting to clean my brushes Thursday evening. This kind of mistake can cost me $100 in brushes.

I got lucky and I was able to rehabilitate all of these. Thank you cold, damp weather!

But I have been using a lot of brushes this week, because I was doing both acrylic and oil. Here are some of those acrylic testers, with me working out some new layers.

And then I felt ready to pull out this piece, which I thought at one point was done, then realized it wasn’t but it was too intimidating.

This one is very personal for me, an imagined ancestor I’ve felt such a strong connection with, I then get very scared of “losing” her.

First, I started reworking the background with white.

Then added some loose blue. Sadly, the photo blew it out so it’s hard to see. Note the flag shape changing too.

And even more blue and more flag editing. Also you’ll see the blue now coming in tight around those figures. And the skyline drops.

But do you see how distracting the blue sky gets? Your eye gets stuck on it. So my next edit was to the more smooth sky below. It is much more blue than this appears. I’ll get a better picture next time.

And here’s a closeup of the main character.

Whoever she is, I’m really glad to have her around now. And I’m excited about finding a true resolution to this image.

Happy Friday, everyone! And may your weekend be free of technical snafus! (But if you do run into some, I suggest listening to the Star Wars theme, classic Stevie Wonder, and Superchunk, not necessarily in that order.)