"Chaotic Beauty"

(unavailalbe.....acrylics with retarder)

"Chaotic beauty is found in the dried up corn stalk." I thought I had better identify what I was trying to paint in the quote just in case you were wondering. It's all about the texture and the essence of the image. Even the lettering was severely deconstructed to fit in.

Believe it or not, I really do have a vision of where I'm going, but I will readily admit it can be a "bumpy" ride. I really do like the texture of the corn stalk, but also feel like the piece as a whole could be better integrated. And since process is so important, I want you to share in my process so you can see that when learning new techniques and a new direction, it can take some time and lots of practice to get there.

One of the things that I think will help is drawing the gesture of a particular image before painting it so that the muscle memory is there. Another thing that helped in this piece was doing an underpainting of the cornstalk color first and drying that first coat before painting wet into wet with the rest of the painting. It also helps to allow enough time to have some things dry before moving on, but also blending some of the edges.

I did write the quote with a pointed pen and acryl gouache. The paint was not totally set up, but that actually worked to achieve my objective of allowing the lettering to be textural rather than totally readable. Because the pen dug into the paint and revealed the base color, I smoothed it out a bit by dabbing alcohol over it. And so the thing I took away from today's painting is that alcohol, once again, can be a hugh assist in the deconstruction of surface tension. And there you have it...just a few more things to think about.