Felt like doing something different today, so I did this...

Because I bought paints to have something fun for the kids to do on our week of staying at home vacation- which was really restful, and highly enjoyable, with a couple of fun days out of the city too-

It's certainly a theme that's been done before.  My drawing skill determined that yes, I would be going abstract.  I like the textures, messing about with the brushes, mixing colours--and the freedom of not really having a goal.  I just wanted to see what I might make.  I started out wanting to do a prairie-but that literally seemed too flat once I'd blocked in the background colours.  I'd been looking at all my prairie pics, but none really felt like I could represent them in paints...I chose to get started rather than keep thinking about it.

Having just started, I quit while I felt ahead with the clouds, and think I managed to get a little motion into them.  The ground though, that was a different experience.  What began as grass was too brown, so I tried changing it, and then it was too smooth, too uniform, too flat, and not enough interesting.  That's how the prairie became river valley, because I was mucking about with it so much; and the grass became a little forest-y.  Art class in school (I mean, way back--9th grade) came back in little bits...foreground more detail, background and distance less...and that's about as technical as I got.  I did most of the texture with a palate knife, and had fun.  That's most of it...I had fun-even the parts where I knew it didn't look like anything...making it into not-nothing was satisfying and a welcome relief from contemplation.  The most compelling reason for posting has little to do with the final outcome-just that sometimes, it's time to be tactile and concrete...to balance out the thinking and feeling with doing.

Cheers and chao.