It's Beautiful Outside Today!

Oh my gosh, it is 70 degrees here and sunny.  It's so completely wooonderful ....

This last part of winter here in North Carolina has been endless...

We had 8 inches of snow last week, and I had an extra day off of work so i was able to work on this painting and finish it up which felt so good...

I'd like you to meet "Lily and Estelle"

 - they are friends...

If you think i go into a painting knowing what the hell i am doing - you would be completely wrong!

 Honestly half the time i spend on a painting is fixing what's wrong with it...

 Let me show you all the incarnations of this painting

Below is how it started...

My inspiration was that yummy color of gray blue and the contrast with the black

sometimes i crave painting certain colors

 Ok, so phase two - I  painted in a friend in the background

but after pacing around and looking at it for a while, i decided the background cow was distracting - she just wasn't "it"

so had to wipe out a couple hours worth of work...

that's frustrating!

Next i decided to give just the impression of another cow in the background - 

at first i liked it better, it seemed easier on the eye, less distracting

but then it came to my mind it looked like a big gray male body appendage  ...

if i were talking to a friend in person i would just say it looks like a 

big _ _ _ _  !

but i can't really say that on the blog, you know

and sorry i know that's so crude... but... do you see ?

Of course, once that was in my brain I knew it had to go

you just can't unsee that

Finally this sweet girl wanted to come in for a nuzzle, and she was so cute, but she didn't quite work with the first cow...

 two cute cows, ... 

but didn't look like they should be in the same painting

hmmmm, what to do now?

so even though i liked the cow's black and gray nose, 

I decided to take a risk and blobbed some pink paint on the nose

and 

viola!

it worked!

 now they play together well

phew!

i can't tell you how many times i was ready to just call it an "ok" painting and be done with it

but now i love them both and immediately their names came into my head

"Lily and Estelle"

That's probably more than you ever wanted to know about my backwards painting techniques!

but i wanted to tell you, so you won't be nervous to try painting or just anything

and realize that we all struggle with our work, sometimes we go backwards or come in sideways 

 sometimes we almost give up, and sometimes it's ok to give up if something is pulling your creative force away

the trick is to figure out when to go forward and push through it

or to just let it go...

... the end ...