Some things take a long time and a lot of patience. Finally, after much contemplation and deliberation, I have arrived at a method that I can relax with and create something that I really enjoy looking at. It is a good balance of cool and warm colors, positive and negative and basically push and pull. I have spent this new year not painting as much as thinking about where I wanted to be with my art. This came about because my time is more limited and I was becoming frustrated with my final pieces. I realized that I was not having much luck painting on canvas. The surface seemed to make my work flat. I did like the Golden Open Acrylics but again thought they went flat on the canvas. After much thought, I decided that it was the surface and also that I needed some transparency or white space to allow the painting to breathe. I was missing some of the wonderful characteristics of the watercolors but was determined to make the Opens work. I switched my surface to a very heavy watercolor paper that can take abuse and hold lots of water and stuck with the Opens as I really like the saturation of color. This is the result. Sometimes you just need to take a break and relax to get past the frustration and blocks.
