Painting Experiments

When I was a little girl I always enjoyed going back to school.  It wasn't just because of my friends and teachers, but is was all the great art supplies.  My favorite thing was the big wooden easel with the roll of white paper, cups of tempera paint and fat brushes.  I loved to experiment with paint. I would smear on a large blob of color, then another and another.  I would mix and move the paint all over the paper. The smell and gooey, glistening consistency of wet paint always made me happy.  And it still does.  I love the process of squeezing paint out of a tube or bottle, mixing colors and painting on a surface.  I don't always know where I'm going.  I just love the trip.

I reuse a lot of art surfaces.  I don't like to waste a thing.  So I covered the drawing I did the other day with a layer of gesso.  I could see the ghost of the drawing through the gesso so I doodled on it for a little while with some colored markers.

But I didn't want to doodle any more so I squeezed out some paint. Primary colors plus white.  I started painting over the tree blending the colors as I moved ,the brush around.


I put blue and pink on the large tree.






I spread purple on the small trees. Green on the ground and yellow in the sky.

These were under colors but I didn't like the way they looked.  So I began to cover everything with gesso again.  But this time I left a little edge of color showing.

This is where I stopped for the day.  I kind of like the ghosts of the under painting showing through.  Tomorrow I might add some new colors and see what happens.

See, painting doesn't have to end with a perfect picture.  It's just fun to spread it on!

Enjoy.