That's the way (uh-huh, uh-huh) I like it...

This one was super fun to do: Yet another small old canvas, gessoed over but this time covered with white paint (I was tired of seeing the dark seeping through; that sort of grunge look).

After watching a video of an artist who talked about painting the same scene over and over, I gave myself permission to do on purpose what I so often do by accident, and scribbled a waterview -- first with pencils, and then with soft pastels. I then sprayed the pastels with water, letting them run and rubbing them in a bit with my fingers.

Next I poured out my three favorite blues and some white onto the palette and randomly brushed them all onto the canvas, sprayed it with water, then smeared everything around with my new squeegee. I tipped it on its side to get the drips going across the canvas for a bit, then tipped it back and began smearing some sections with my fingers, scraping with my fingernails, adding more white, adding more yellow and green pastel, smearing those -- my fingers were a holy mess by the time I was done.

But it felt like the right thing to do; to engage more physically with the canvas instead of using the tools as a go-between -- they so rarely do what I want them to.

I won't make the mistake of saying I finally found my style this time, but I will say I've found another way to play, and I feel like I'm engaging more with the canvas and the paint, and that's a good thing. If nothing else, it gives me a feeling of control -- something that is seriously lacking in the rest of my life right now. And while most days, thanks to my meditation practice, I'm reasonably okay with that, I totally lost it last night, had a complete meltdown, and recited this total litany of all the stuff that's bugging me right now (most of it national and global, but some personal, too).

So it was good to find even a tiny place where I could make things happen just the way I like them. And though it's more appealing in person than it is in this photo (again: my phone camera really doesn't do well with aqua/cyan) I get that it's not great art. The good news is -- I didn't need it to be!