Lately I've been looking at my older paintings, selecting those that don't quite work. I may have thought so when I painted them, but not now. I've taken these paintings off my website and now I'm repainting them.
I did a series of paintings that had been popular back then--but not all of them worked that well. Here's one that I chose to work on today, on a 48" x 48" canvas:
First I covered the whole canvas in parchment (a light tan) and let the paint dry. This gave me a "blank canvas" to start with so that I wouldn't feel constrained by what was already there. The original texture, however, still remained.
I began painting freely with a brush, beginning with cadmium orange, Indian yellow, raw sienna and burnt sienna. In between the shapes I'd created with these colors, I added titanium white and dabs of the other colors.
For variation, I added a bit of red and some Prussian blue, painting quickly without worrying too much about composition. I just let it flow.
That's how I ended up with this:
In my next painting session, I'll see where this one takes me.
