Instead of decorations . . . .

Maybe we'll get around to indoor holiday decorations soon. But maybe not  .. . we're going to everyone else's homes for holiday gatherings this year, so we only need put up what we want for ourselves. Michael has put up his Christmas Village, I got out my very silly electric Hallmark snowman.  Maybe we'll decide to do a tree. If not, I'll use the time to paint!

Dogwood Abstract # 6

So, here's the latest in the series.  For this one I decided I wanted to emphasize line, so I did a freehand light pencil sketch, then dipped my brush into a new orange, and started to paint, outlining all the shapes you see here.  A very different way to tackle the image, but I enjoyed it.  I'm glad I was able to simplify from the previous versions. The painting is not "finished" to my satisfaction: if I wanted to enter it in a competition or frame it I'd want to work on all those awkward edges. But I think I'll let that go and move on. I've already started the next one.

I'm not sure how others do this series thing, but I've not been back to my original source for a while. I'm working from the previous paintings only.  Is that what I'm supposed to do? Does it matter?!  Anyway,  the consistently hard edges in these past paintings have made me think about that element of line, and the next one is starting out (oh the challenge!) wet-in-wet and loosey-goosey!

The red-orange line here has crept into my consciousness from another artist:  Kathy Wirth was in the same Mike Bailey workshop at Kanuga. She started her series much sooner than I did last spring or summer.  She's such a talented artist. See her blog and her very interesting series by clicking on her name.