Glazed over

A few more layers on one of my abstracts yesterday. There will be several more layers of colour in little lines then some unifying glazes over the top, on each stripe, to get the effect I want. The advantage of the very hot weather of the last couple of days is that even the very high oil content glazes I was using on the other painting are drying much faster than usual.

I've also edited another couple of chapters of the novel, but was hit with another face full of paperwork in my inbox this morning - forms to fill in for starting training this September, most of the questions asking me for information I don't even have yet. I am trying not to let this stress me out in the slightest - back in my consultancy days I generally had not just a Plan B, but Plans C, D and E for my next move. Life is not like that any more.

On Painting

.. because I have started again. I had a look at two of my abstract works in progress, seen here in quick colour sketches,










and did a lot of glazing (thin layers of translucent colour) on one of them. It's an 80*80cm square.
















I'm planning to take it further tomorrow when this layer has dried and get started with more of the lower, opaque layers on the second one, which should eventually look more shimmery like the sketch.












This is a 60*60 square and has a companion piece for which I have only painted a plain background so far.

All of these came out of a kind of prayer/meditation type of session I sometimes do with a set of oil pastels and a sketch book handy.

O Rose thou art sick

I've been painting flowers, something I haven't done for a couple of years. I'd forgotten how quickly they change, coming into full bloom and then losing vitality and falling. That's to be expected, and the different types take different times - the sweet peas brought by a visitor lasted three days, if that. Even roses change every few hours, going through a process when you think they've opened fully but they continue to get bigger.

This makes painting them difficult to fit into an already busy schedule. Last time I did a series of flower sketches I used to come home from work reasonably early to catch a couple of hours of light, it being high summer. At the moment my painting practice is more to do an hour or so several days a week.

I quite like the idea that if something unexpected turns up I can rearrange my schedule to paint it before it disappears. The practice was a bit different, as I ran out of time with the roses and am going to have to finish them from a photograph. With both of these pictures I started with a very quick charcoal outline and painted some rough colours in to cover the whole canvas. Then when I returned the next day I could get more detail - working with the fact that the flowers had changed drastically overnight. Another time it might make more sense to get a more detailed alla prima painting done on day one, and maybe even several colour sketches over several days, but as I said, I am still a bit out of practice.