AHA Moments

Welcome 2016! Today is the first of the new year and I'd like to dedicate this post to all of my "AHA Moments". I've had a lot of them over the years but many of them did come in 2015. Here's a few...

2015 was significant in my artistic endeavors in life because I discovered artist Flora Bowley and took her painting e-course, "Brave Intuitive Painting"(link to her book). It was very important for me because in taking the course, I finally convinced myself to be more dedicated to my art, and in doing so I discovered the Artists Helping Artists Radio Show or "AHA"show. Perhaps the best "AHA moment" of my artistic life, I listened to it like it was my my job, (on my way to my job) and I got a flood of inspiration and information that is helping  shape the idea of "making it" as a working artist.

So now it's 2016,  and getting my act together. I'm in the process of created a website and I'm participating in the 30 paintings in 30 days challenge, which was started my artist Leslie Saeta (the creator of the AHA show.  Now, the painting process I've learned through the Flora Bowley course is a layered approach. So I'll be doing 30 paintings, but I'll be working on 7 or so canvases at a time, recording the process as I go so that I can show it to, well, whoever sees this!

The first thing I want to share is my palette which is amazing because the acrylic paint just peels off of it easily so you don't have to scrape, rinse or wash...it's called "Mijello" and it's available at Michael's for $35. Here's a quick video of me using it...

So for the beginning of this challenge, the first thing I did was to number the canvases to keep track.

 The way I start is by scanning my supplies and picking up tools that I feel drawn to...

 Then comes the paint and the spray bottle for dripping, paper towels for dabbing...

 Flora Bowley teaches that the act of getting your hands messy can really be helpful in this process and using your fingers to spread paint, or as a mark making tool really lets the creativity flow in the beginning layers. Once I actually pick up the paint brush there is no plan, I just go with what feels right.

 The difference between cheap paint like that on the left in the above photo and the golden paint on the right is incredible. Yes both give a translucent effect, but the golden paint dries and does not re-activate, eliminating the mixing, where-as in the next photo you can see how the orange muddies up when new paints are introduced after drying.

 This tool - the "color shaper", is my FAVORITE! I love to use it for scraping into the paint to reveal the colors below and to create interesting lines and textures.

 1/30 (1st layer) 

 1/30 (2nd layer and finished!) 

 2/30

 3/30

 4/30

 5/30

6/30

 7/30