Not Quite There

I just read my last post and realized that I had given my art her head and she had galovanted (is that a word?) down a different path.  Flowers, however are key.  As I looked again at Georgia's "Black Holly hock"  I was again taken by the stark richness of it all.

My adventure into flowers has been quite different (and I can see right now that I am going to have to learn to get some pictures up!)

1. First, I had had NO, repeat NO intention of doing flowers at all.  It just came to me after an attempt to do an abstraction of a sky the other day.  How I love Winsor Blue (red)!.

Unfortunately, as a sky, it just didn't work.  I did my usual thing of getting everything nice and medium with no contrast.  Fail.  I took out the charcoal to see if adding contrast in a redo would work.  Double fail.

2. Impressionistic.  I had looked at the sky...and saw....flowers everywhere. Everywhere!  I put on Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23, second movement (a slow, mournful Mozart, if you can imagine), and began to paint in details; the results were, well, mixed. 

A couple of great tulips, roses (white with Winsor blue shadows) and poppies, and a garden path, but that charcoal did absolutely nothing for the piece.  I am faced with:

3.Redoing.  This is OK.  If Georgia could repaint a mesa three hundred (300) times, I can repaint this once.
Problem:  I am scared to try because how will I get that constellation of shapes again?  It IS, I must remind myself an EXPERIMENT, not Van Gogh I am ruining.  Just a piece of paper...Just a piece of paper....just a piece of paper....Unfortunately, in my real other life, people are being somewhat critical of everything (not YOU dearest), and times are, shall we say, stormy. (Ha! Does that make me an Artist now?).  I can see them all--ghosts standing in my studio, looking over my shoulder, making snide comments.  Need to leave the criticism where it belongs--a very big trash barrel outside the Solar System.

4.  Editing.  Yup, get out the scissor and judiciously cut out the worst of the charcoal offense.  Not sure this will work, but may give it a go.  Anyone need artistic bookmarks????

I will probably do all of these. 

And my ideas?  Not even sure what they were, but right now, have a desert piece on the board, and am working on People with the idea of going Icons.  In this case, it is a matter of using a pile of very small frames a friend is donating to me.  Form follows function. ;p