It's been fun working on a big piece for a change. And it's also been fun working on a piece where I started with very little idea where I was going with it.
It's always an ice-breaker to start with the background, so I started out fooling with that. My initial collage got - unintentionally - buried, and I got discouraged and put the whole thing aside for a while.
Then, back to it.
Well, I made more progress, but it continues to be tentative. It's odd, but the one thing I know is where I'm going to hang this painting when I'm finished. No, there are two things. The other is the this is "Peanut, a Portrait of the Artist as a Young Cat." It will hang in my studio.
At the end of my last session, I was frustrated that I'd gone too far, covering too much of the background that I was happy with. I didn't know what to do with it, so I just turned to something I felt confident with, painting Peanut's face. It went well, then I continued with the body, and was inspired to paint in the paint brush under Peanut's paws.
But then what? I decided to print out more pages from the art supply catalog I'd downloaded. My thought was to recapture the background I'd liked in the first place. But suddenly, all the images on those catalog pages seemed too small.
Stumped for a while. But then I had a brilliant idea. I had plenty of art supplies. Why not just photograph them?
So that's what I did, then onwards with the collage.
As I was laying out the pieces, I first had three of these tubes radiating from above Peanut's head like a crown. But then I thought it was a little too much, as I often create headdresses for the animals in my artwork. So I just went with the two. Later when I looked at this from across the room, the two paint tubes looked like rabbit ears to me. Maybe I'll go with that.
Do you experience these wanderings as well? How do you deal with them?
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