Confession

I like to paint. This seems obvious, but I mean something specific. The deciding, planning, drawing, mixing, and so on are all perfectly fine things to do, but what I like best is applying paint to a surface. At the last demo Kat did, I noticed that she seems to spend more time thinking about where a paint stroke goes or mixing the right color than actually putting the actual paint on the surface.

I've been thinking about this, but was also distracted and a bit frantic getting ready for out-of-town visitors last weekend. Now that things are quieter, I decided to put this to practice and, also, to start keeping a painting notebook. To keep track of my paintings in the notebook, I randomly decided that this one is #143. Before I put any paint on a surface, my goal is to write several intentions for the current piece. This should also help slow down the process a tiny bit. Most times, I just start and I don't think that serves me very well.

There were two goals for this one. While the background of this picture was dark, the lighting on the cat's face was dramatic. I wanted to play up or, at least be, true to the values by having a stark distinction between the lights and the darks. I also wanted to have bigger and bolder paint strokes.

One thing I learned was that mixing browns or oranges tending towards brown requires quite a bit of blue.