I started a series of these abstract landscape postcards. I have about a dozen 4 x 6 “scraps” from larger sheets. To be honest, my mojo is taking a siesta. I thought, “How bad can I screw up a simple postcard?” HA! Ha ha ha.
Out of eleven, I think I have three good ones. Not too bad of a batting average. Not great, but not bad. I think. I won’t do the math on that one.
It does mean that I can say I am two days ahead. Woo Whoo! But I will likely keep painting, and hoping for something better. I’ve got three busy days next week and that means my posts will continue to be sporadic.
My first #21 was this abstract collage. Well, it was abstract until I decided to put flowers on it. The start was just me getting every last drop of paint off my brush (from day 20). It was like the energizer bunny, it just kept going, and going, and going.
Day 21 start
Day 21 #1, mixed media and collage.
This month whooshed by! We are starting the last week of the challenge. Whoa!
Couldn’t have done it without you! Thank you for your encouragement and support! I am grateful for your suggestions and critiques. Your friendship is a blessing!
I went through the paintings, and found my favorites for each month. A full third of the total made the list. I condensed that list even more, for my top favorites.
I am also sharing the paintings that had the most views. Not a complete list, and I am not sure it is a true representation of viewer favorites. The majority of my Mingus posts, included more than one painting. That makes a true count difficult. I would love to hear your favorites, if there are any that stand out to you. Sea Dean has posted her six favorites on her 100 Days Of Mingus Pinterest board.
I have procrastinated, putting off writing this post. I keep starting projects that have waited while I was painting Mingus. I am not sure what to write, or, if I have anything interesting to say about the project.
Dave asked if I have noticed any changes in my practice as a result of painting daily. My reply was that I am less precious about each piece. I told him that I would talk about it more in this post. But I really don’t have much more to say. This project was a success in that I finished. I kept up. Didn’t give up. But my habit of setting high standards for myself, has me… feeling like I missed the mark. I was looking forward to more experimentation. Creating pieces with more depth and complexity.
I feel like I should have more to say. Maybe it is my “style”. Maybe there is “a style”. But I feel like I just did the same thing over and over (laughing). I wasn’t able to work in different mediums or try as many new techniques as I would have liked. And this is just me, grading myself. My progress. I know it was due to circumstances out of my control. So I am cutting myself some slack. And I did enjoy the process. I am still painting daily.
When I looked at the paintings again, there were a few that jumped out at me as incomplete. Less than half of the 100. And I know I mentioned that a few times as I went along. I am planning on adding to some of them. But that will have to wait until next month.
Some of you have also asked if they are for sale. If you are interested, you can let me know in a comment or through a private message on Facebook. The large, 5.5 x 11.5, are $120. Smaller pieces start at $17 for ATC’s and range from $38 for 3.5 x 5.5 to $70 for 5 x 7. For U.S. buyers, shipping is free until the end of July.
There was only one painting that I walked away from. Only one lying around. If I mentioned in a post about trashing a ruined painting, you can catch me in a fib. This is from the first week. I honestly can’t remember what I was thinking. Go for it, have a good laugh! Ha ha ha! The sky is watercolor, and I like how it turned out. The hills are acrylic, and there is pen as well. I used a rubber comb while the red paint was wet. I was going to layer more on this. Add texture.
The sky is Windsor Newton, not Inktense. So I would have to seal it to continue. Inktense is permanent once dry. (I don’t have a good sky blue in Inktense.) The sky is what stopped me in my tracks. I won’t take this any further, like I said, the original idea is gone.
I still need to flatten the paintings. I will share that process with you soon.
“No man is a failure who has friends.” It’s a Wonderful Life
“I walk every day, and I look at the mountains and the fields and the small city, and I say: ‘Oh my God, what a blessing.’ Then you realise it’s important to put it in a context beyond this woman, this man, this city, this country, this universe.” Paulo Coelho
Number one hundred was a struggle. It just was not working. I started on an 8 x 12 inch piece of paper. More room for big sky. I got the first layers down. And then the electricity went out. Lightning hit a power box. Or transformer box. What are they called?
For about an hour I was focused on getting the power back on. Thinking I needed to just flip the breakers and it would come back. Then a neighborhood conversation started. Phone calls and suppositions.
This was worrisome for me, as I am connected to an O2 concentrator 24/7. Earlier in the day I had run errands. Got home, started chores and I hadn’t yet plugged in the portable to charge the battery. There was 3.25 hours of charge left. Now, I also have regular O2 tanks. Some are empty, but I have a total of 8 to 16 hours there. And if all else failed, if the outage lasted longer, I could always jump in the car and charge the battery that way.
But I think that first, “Uh-Oh”, messed with my mo-jo. Two hours later power was back, but I was stuck. I picked up a brush, and fiddled a bit. But the way forward was, cloudy. So I called it a night.
The next day, I realized, I had sketched on the back of the paper. Arches can be used on either side. The back is smooth. That could explain why I was having a hard time. I am not familiar with that texture. So I flipped the paper over. Transferred the image again, and started to paint. And the same thing happened. I got stuck. I painted in the sky, thinking that would get me on the right track. I have fun painting the skies, and they often come together quickly for me. Not this time. It was muck.
The image I was working from, has a bit of curved road and some trees in the bottom right corner. I thought I would attempt a more “complicated” piece, a “grand slam” for the finale. “Ha ha ha,” said the universe. There are also distant homes under the smaller ridge, to the left. It is a view from town. South of my usual Mingus view.
I hit a wall and called it a night. Again. But I did manage to get my #Worldwatercolormonth pieces done. I started #100 one more time. Got about half way, before my eyes refused to stay open. I went back to the 5.5 x 11.5 size sheet.
This morning I looked at the painting, and went to work. #100DaysOfMingus, #The100DaysProject, done. Whew!
Not sure why, but #12 was difficult to edit. The colors are off. Below is a photo to give you a better idea. This is sort of abstracted ice plant.
When I was in 4th grade, my brother and I were latch-key kids. Mom owned two hair salons, one of which was just down the hill behind where we lived. If needed, she could walk home in five minutes. We used to climb the hill behind out house, and make forts in the bushes at the top. Climbing that hill from the parking lot (red), was our “Olympic marathon event”. It was steep, and we had to use the irrigation pipe as our “rope”. Had to do that on the sly, so we wouldn’t get busted.
Hills
The hill directly behind our house was not so steep. One day we got the idea to use the plastic rug protectors as sleds to slide down the ice plant on the hill. Well, the cleats on the bottom (yeah, had to look that up) caught on the ice plant, so that was a no go.
Brilliant idea, and I think the credit goes to me, “Let’s flip ’em over!” So we excitedly slid down the hill, thorns poking our backsides. It was a quick ride. We forgot to think of an exit plan. At the bottom, was a cement drainage ditch. So we had to, sort of, lean to the side to jump off before we hit cement. And THAT is when the thorns scraped our bare legs. Yup, ouch. But I guess the ride was worth it, because I remember we did it once or twice more.
The drainage ditch was usually dry. So. Cal., not a lot of rain. That is what made it easy for Mom to climb the hill. It also was a quick route to the 7-11 that was there at the time. You could still get 5 cent candy then. Ice cream, soda, gum. What more could a kid want but easy access to junk food. There were spindly trees there, and we would sneak behind them so Mom could not see us if she happened to look out the window. We had to be very stealth.
Not sure why I am sharing this, only that these were the things I was remembering while I worked on this piece.
Yellow-Salon, Blue-path to 7-11, Red-steep hill, star-home.
All 100 are in the gallery now. My next post will be a review of #The100DayProject. I will show you my favorites, and share which posts were the most popular. It might take a day or two to go through them all. Ha ha.
Brilliant idea, and I think the credit goes to me, “Let’s flip ’em over!” So we excitedly slid down the hill, thorns poking our backsides. It was a quick ride. We forgot to think of an exit plan. At the bottom, was a cement drainage ditch. So we had to, sort of, lean to the side to jump off before we hit cement. And THAT is when the thorns scraped our bare legs. Yup, ouch. But I guess the ride was worth it, because I remember we did it once or twice more.
