Perseverence

Art washes from the soul the dust of everyday life.” -- Pablo Picasso

It also gets paint on the computer keyboard.  Man, I am a messy painter.  Today I was using gesso, acrylic paints, charcoal pencil, and oil pastels.  In the course of a few hours work, I dirty at least a dozen brushes.  My studio redo is already too small for me.  I find I want to stand while painting so I think I need a real easel.  Some day, I'll get it all figured out.  The good thing about my work area being so small is that I have to clean up after each work time.  

This week I've been working on a large canvas.  This one is for me.  I've been so busy setting up my Etsy shop and getting it stocked with a body of work that I haven't thought about what I might like in my own living room.  

For this painting,  I wanted to work larger and also wanted there to be a lot of white in the picture.  My living room has only one accent color...wythe blue 

which I wanted to repeat similarly in the painting.   And of course, I needed a girl.  

I am still trying to find my way as a mixed media artist.  I start each canvas out with a collage of materials in the background.  Materials like stamps, written material, music, poetry and patterned papers. I try to be somewhat strategic about where I place them. Ideally some of this should still be showing by the end of the paint process, but invariably I've made so many layers that the first one is long since obscured.  All that is left is the texture from the edges of the papers.  That is not necessarily a good thing.  But, I am learning.  

This  is when I was about 1/3 done. 

 I liked it, but when I moved on and painted her face and hair she looked VERY unbalanced.  Her head looked huge for her body.   So I added some "body" to her and this is where I am now.  

20 x 24 x 1 1/2" canvas

I always take a day to look at a painting before I say I'm done.  Any suggestions?

************  November 7,  2012  UPDATE:

I worked on her some more.  The arms really bothered me so I made the right one longer and the left one more proportionate.  I made her dress more see-through so you could see some skin through it, lowered her neckline and got rid of the butterfly.  Also worked on her hand, making her index finger longer.  I made most of the changes with oil pastels, because I had used a white pastel on the top and you can't/shouldn't add water based paints on top of oils.  I'm liking her better now.  I may still work some more dots back in the left upper side. I painted some out when getting rid of the butterfly.   I also used my Nikon on this rather than my IPad camera so the coloring is more true.   Thank you for your encouragement and constructive comments.  

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