Squandered

 "Squandered" - mixed media on wood panel (plywood, uncradled), 30" x 23".  Available here and at Artfinder.

I am installed in a fairylike place. I do not know where to poke my head; everything is superb, and I would like to do everything, so I use up and squander lots of color, for there are trials to be made. - Claude Monet

Last month's workshop gave me HEAP LOADS of new tools to work with.  And I decided to try to use them all in a mash-up.

So this piece began with two of my photographs put through an app called Image Blender.  It allows you to take two photos (or a photo and an image of a painting, or two paintings) and merge them into one blended composition. (Before you ask, inserting a photo of your own face over your landscape photographs is a terrible idea!)  You can adjust which image is dominant, or blend them equally.  After I saved that image, I ran it through the Notanizer app so I could adjust the values within the blended pic.

Squandered

Image Blender + Notan Photo Mash-Up

​Now that's a LOT of app use for this painter.  But the results were intriguing, so I sketched it out on a large piece of plywood with Artgraf and white gesso.  And asked myself "NOW WHAT?"

Thanks to the course, I have some mad  paint blending skills.  So I went to the book of Monet paintings referenced during the course and chose one of Monet's dark, moody garden paintings as my inspiration color palette. Stealing a palette from a master is a lovely shortcut when you want to be certain everything will harmonize.

inspiration painting

Using as wide a variety of paint application implements as possible (extreme variety instead of extreme limitation) and adding 80 million layers of acrylic paint and watercolor crayon (well, maybe not quite that many) -  something happened that made me step back and smile.

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Thanks to everyone who participated in the "Joy  Pocket" challenge last week!  Wonder Mike put his nose in a pile of names, and came up with Carl S. as the winner of  a tiny original painting!  Congratulations, Carl!