Fractured Glass Meets Kaleidoscopes: Day 6

As the canvas fills up, it becomes more challenging and interesting to fill the remaining spaces with colors that keep the balance, maintain the energy, and keep me entertained.

Fractured Glass Meets Kaleidoscopes: Day 5

Because the canvas (140# Arches paper, actually) is beginning to look half-finished, I started to count the bubbles, dividing them into three categories: complete, partly-painted, and undone.

No matter how I calculated, counting and re-counting, there are just 9 finished bubbles with all of their painted lines, and I'm nowhere near even half done.

I should have known better.  When I painted "100 Buttons," I began to count and learned that there were far more than 100 buttons, and that the finish line was far, far away.

"100 Buttons" was inspired by a line drawing of a shoe  with covered buttons.

I said "Ah ha! I can do that!" and traced nickels, dimes, quarters, and an assortment of French coins, painted Davy's Gray outlines, and then painted in their solid colors.

These "buttons" were particularly engaging, and most of them have multiple layers of watercolor underneath their painted threads.

Although most of my paintings are part of families (Bright Boxes, Small Friends, Kaleidoscopes, LLLamas, Cats, Rings & Links), 100 Buttons is now and probably forever will be an orphan -- just one in the family.

Fractured Glass Meets Kaleidoscopes: Day 4

In the ordinary course of painting nanoscapes, I paint in all of the shapes before painting in all of the outlines.

However, as the Boss of Myself, I can test, bend or break my rules. 

I couldn't resist painting the lines in the orange ball near the bottom left, pointing the way to the shape of things to come.

Fractured Glass Meets Kaleidoscopes: Day 3

I had imagined that each of these bubbles would be absolutely monochromatic, but I find that colors that complement and contrast are irresistible.

For the record, I took this photograph at the end of the third day of work on this painting.  This is the second blog post.

When Fractured Glass and Kaleidoscopes Collide

Having acquired a number of new paint colors during the past few weeks, I want to explore them and to see how they work with one another, and with the related colors on my ever-expanding palette.

As you can see, I am not yet finished with Fractured Glass (three paintings unambiguously celebrating random color), nor have I abandoned the nanoscapes' vision of Kaleidoscopes and Molecular Biology. DISCLAIMER: My version of molecular biology is not a reflection of what I may have learned in 9th grade Biology in 1963 at Hyattsville Junior High School in Hyattsville, MD.

Fractured Glass #1 celebrates random color and begins to answer the question "What happens when triangles go wild?" It is 12x16 inches.

For a painter who can't have or make too many colors and who (as she learned from Russ Dittmar) never met a color she didn't want to enhance, Fractured Glass is a platform for fun.

Among the earliest nanoscapes, Molecular Biology 112 shows things heretofore unrevealed by electronic microscopes.  It is 4x6 inches.

In 2007, in the beginning of the nanoscapes' creative process now called Painstaking Enthusiasm, I used cookie cutters to create the circles, drew the patterns, painted them with Sepia (now abandoned for the lighter Davy's Gray), painted in the shapes, and outlined the shapes with a Rapidograph,  a technical pen with a very, very tiny point. Once I was brave and confident enough to use a tiny watercolor brush, I ditched the Rapidograph.

This first and as-yet-unnamed marriage (or collision) of the Fractured Glass and Kaleidoscope Families (12x16 inches) may be an exploration of patterns of surface tension on bubbles of unknown origin.  Or perhaps not.


But each color will be fun to explore.

Robert the Tap Dancing Rooster

After six weeks of painting with Painstaking Exuberance entirely in the world of Fractured Glass, I needed a break.

And what a break!  Today, through Pass the Baton, I booked some "Alternative Careers" and "Professionalism Has Attached" programs, and then I painted a rooster. 

Meet my new Small Friend, Robert The Tap Dancing Rooster.  Because tap dancing 'til 2 a.m. annoyed the hens and cut into his ability to crow at dawn, he was banished from the hen house. He has landed in my studio.  Except for attacking the paint brushes while I worked on Robert's portrait, my cats have ignored him.

Robert will appear on a note card and in a small (6x9") print. He and the now completed 22x33" Fractured Glass #3 will be on the nanoscape website next week.

Saturday July 17, Woodbury Lakes Art Faire (Woodbury, MN)

I have been painting on Fractured Glass #3 non-stop for two days, and hope to finish tonight...if you are out and about on Saturday or Sunday July 17 and 18, drop by the Woodbury Lakes Art Faire and check out the work of members of HandmadeMN, a group of Minnesota-based ETSY artists and craftspeople.

I'll be there on Saturday with nanoscapes.