This painting has proven to be an interesting experience all the way around!
This is the first time I painted mixed water media (mainly acrylic) on Ampersand Aquabord – and I am in LOVE! It started out as a poured watercolour with the fun watery evergreen dripping into the golds and blues. I loved it when it was still simple. As in before I got in there mucking around with the paint.
My original vision was to paint the mourning doves at the top of the weeping mulberry. Then I loved the drippiness and started painting in every single stupid branch. Then I get obsessed with the stupid branches – painting each one in careful detail. And I started resenting the painting for loosing the drippiness that I loved. I really really laboured over this one.
It took forever and I was never quite certain. So, today I signed it and and photographed it. Then an interesting thing happened. I took photos of the large painting 30″ x 22″. Then I focused in on the birds to bad able to share with you the mourning dove details. Then it hit me. I remembered that I wanted to capture the feeling of the tree and the cold birds perched on that interesting tree…. not paint the whole dang tree.
Crop top time
So with this cropped photo, I realized I was about to convince my husband to cut it almost in two. When I mentioned it to him – he got up and went over to it and said right about here….see – I was right – this painting did not need all that volume. It was a distraction. I am much happier with it cropped as it captures what I was hoping to capture in the first place! The colours are closer in the bottom photo!
