I suspect da Vinci has it right...

 ...when he suggested that 'Art is never finished, only abandoned.'  Goodness knows I've abandoned more paintings than I'd ever thought possible, although none are to be found in museums.  My latest 'abandoned' painting is the 3' x 4' painting that is meant for an outdoor patio wall.

This painting started back in May of 2023 and it's come a long way, and many layers since this photo:

The scripted card on the board above is the original concept for the piece.  It's a quote by Arundhati Roy:

Another world is not only possible,

She is on her way.

On a quiet day,

I can hear her breathing.

It's next to impossible to tell where one layer starts and the other ends.

With only the last spray-on protective layers and the hardware to go, I'm reasonably certain I can get it on the wall before September.  🤣  

There are still another couple of projects on the go and at least one is near-ready for abandonment - maybe next week?  In the meantime, wishing you the best creative week ever!

I've been playing...

... with the editing feature both on the phone and computer, and having some fun with that small odd-sized piece I started last week.  The piece is 5 1/4" x 8 1/4".

I rather like the look of the cropped 'Silverpoint'  here -

it's just as attractive to me as the coloured version, even though it loses some of the magical garden mood.

And the dramatic cool version adds a different vibe altogether.

The vertical sensation of the 'Noir' look has some great impact, too.

And given that I've been down with the granddaddy of all colds, it's a great way for me to play without going too far from the couch, and who could resist that?  I'll be back next week, and hopefully there will be 'real' studio time involved.  Meantime, do catch me up on your doings in the comments!  

Time has gone flashing by...

 ...this week, and precious little has been spent playing in the studio.  I've been scanning reams of photos from decades past, learning more than I ever wanted to know about running a condo assocation (as I've taken on the presidency of same this past week), and only yesterday got a chance to throw some paint.  Given that it was Golden High Flow, though, it was satisfying to the max to see it run, pool and play on the 20 x 16 textured surface I started some weeks back.

The above photo is fun given it shows the paint before it starts drying, and that's one of my favourite parts.  I really must do a slowed-down video of the process so I can go all googly-eyed as I watch it over and over. 

And I managed to get started on a small watercolour using one of my newly-sorted vintage photos.  This one is circa 1947 or so.

You can see with the-speed-of-light-diligent work, I've managed to get it to the truly ugly stage of the process; I can only hope it improves significantly over the coming week.  🤣

How has your week gone?  I'm hoping you managed to use a great deal of your physical or digital stash creating something beautiful.  Let me know in the comments, won't you?

The photo/document sort...

 ...and purge continues.  This week I've been ironing documents (and there's a phrase I never expected to use).  A small suitcase, well over a hundred years old, turned out to be full of scrunched up/rolled up/creased and abused documents from my maternal grandparents, both born in the 1880's.  My grandmother's birth certificate, some of which is written in Gaelic, shows her born October 13, 1886, in Clontonacally, district of Ballylesson, county Down, Ireland.  The document measures 7 1/4" x 16 1/4" in size, a fair bit bigger than the wallet size ones I have.

I was amused to find two copies of my grandfather Anderson's baptism certificate, and I'm sure there's a story behind that.  Did his mother request one that was legible after receiving the first scratched-out one?  I've love to know what happened there. 

I found a photo of my maternal great-grandmother, Eliza Jane Maxwell, and she looks a right matriarch, doesn't she?

It makes me laugh to look at this since I can see a similarity between her and a recent  4 a.m. gag photo I took for my kids (entitled Bedhead with Family).

Can it really be true that the family genetics are that strong??!!

With all the sorting and ironing, I had little time this week for studio play, apart from sporadic working on a piece of scrap that had a watercolour technique start.  Given I know next to nothing about watercolour, that was pretty much a fail, but the followup has been fun.

And surely I'll get back to the creative side of the studio soon...I just have to clear all these pieces of memory first!  Hope your week has been fun-filled and warm with the light of inspiration.