Getting Unstuck

There are times when you hit a brick wall. I guess this is one of those times. I'm working my way through it though. This canvas has had a landscape painting on it twice now. The sky is gold leaf and that hasn't changed at all. Everything below that however has changed multiple times. It started out with a red base coat, palette knife work put the landscape greens down and it just wasn't working. I took out a nice big brush and painted over all the land with another layer of red. Again, with some knife work and brushes, putting in the greens and yellows of the prairie. Again, hated it! This time I took out a nice big palette knife and smeared red on top - again. There's a wonderful rough texture going on, I like that part and when I put the red on this time the knife skipped here and there and left wonderful peeks of greens coming through. I may have an inch of texture built up on this thing by the time I'm done but that's okay. I'm liking it a little more each time I paint over it.

This is one that I thought was done. Funny how our vision changes with time and it's not something the eye doctor can fix. I took it out again and studied it.........

and this is where it is now..... gessoed over and new color washed on. When I did the gesso layer I left some of the original blue showing through, I liked the texture in that area. Now I'm building up layers of color and sanding in between to bring back some of the contrasting color.

I don't know where these pieces are going to end up but that's part of the fun. When I'm stuck and can't figure out where I'm going I drag out old canvases and play with them. I'll let you know how it goes.

Have a great weekend,

Carlynne