You guys know, I often sketch and plan a painting.  Projecting a drawn image onto a prepared canvas and working within the structure … and sometimes destroying the structure … but I often have a starting point.

This one went differently.  I like to create organically.  When I sketch I almost never have a plan and count on my ability to leverage an eraser at my whim to just see what happens.  Well, when painting anything remotely figurative that’s not always a good option.  Paint isn’t quite as forgiving as pencil.  

That being said, it is one draw I have to abstract work.  When I go in with a notion and not an idea different things happen.  This one started as a killer green background but then … I was stuck!  The green seemed almost mechanical, fabricated?  Manufactured?  I don’t know but it felt decidedly not organic.

I wish I could tell you what colors were at play here, I wasn’t keeping good track as I was working on the whim.  Looking at it I’m going to assume a Naples Yellow (which is pretty subdued and opaque) and an Umber, I’m assuming raw as it’s my go to right now and the shading here is pretty cool (burnt would have given me more orange I think).

This was fun to do and I enjoyed the swirly nature of it, but it also seemed … bland.

Since that background was so darned cool I played around with layering various translucent oranges and reds onto the yellow … and then I had a bunch of the mix leftover and I just went at the canvas with a palette knife to create some movement and weight at the bottom.  I was, and am pleased with this result.

It still felt, to me, like more was needed to bring it all together.  Given the excellent masking luck I’d had with Rosa I thought I’d try the same technique to create some lightness behind the image.  And voila`!  

Oftentimes the unplanned goes so much better for me than the heavy planning pieces.  That being said, the planning and execution of a piece gives me an opportunity to learn so much that I can then bring to more organic creations.  Nothing is lost.