a day in the studio

After yesterday's hard time with the silver I decided to paint!My studio looks like a tornado's gone thru it! I'm almost embarrassed to show you. I really have to spend a day cleaning up in there. But today, I decided to spend several hours getting some art done and ignored the mess.Robert told me this morning that I should describe some steps in my painting process. The trouble is I'm never sure how the painting's going to evolve. But here's a little of how I went about painting today.I toned a wooden panel with some stuff called sludge. It's brilliant stuff! Inexpensive and high viscosity; nice and buttery. I used a violet hue rather than the green hue and I mixed it with black and unbleached titanium acrylic. Then I collaged a sheet of note paper on it and painted another blended layer of acrylics smudged with my fingers and a bit of paper towel.The piece of note paper is a 1915 Chopin study Nocturne and this set the feeling of the painting for me.Next I got my pencil and sketched a moon, an idea of some stones and trees, and decided to sketch a barn owl.I drew the moon shape by tracing one of the large ceramic bowls holding some tubes of paint, then used a couple of blue and a white pastel to smudge some colour around. I used some acrylic paint and some ink and some more pastels...a black one...to put in the idea of a ground. I also dusted a bit of gold powder here and there and smudged it in.Then I painted the owl in unbleached titanium and some burnt umber acrylics just blocking in bits of colour for the shading.Next I got out my oils and began bending the owl's body, toning down the colours, bring it to life.Well, that's as far as I got. You can see the body part of the owl has the beautiful blended oil while the wings are still blocked in acrylics.Here is the not finished "Nocturne Owl" beside a finished "Night Music" painting. I'm planning to have six or so paintings along this idea, a few big oils and some watercolours done for the show at the end of this month.But that's enough for today. Time to close the door on the studio and wash up the brushes.Hope you all have a fantastic evening and happy mother's day to everyone who celebrates mother's day tomorrow.