January 11, 2012 January 12, 2012

This is my 300th post! Yeah! Do I sound like I’m breaking my arm patting myself on the back? I’m really pleased and happy that I have made so many new friends and learned so much during the last two years of blogging. Thank you….

We have been having a warm and wet winter in Indiana. Snow is due today along with colder weather. I have been thinking about the flow of seasons and about winter. In the mid-1980′s I painted one of my best paintings ever. I copied a photo of a lynx in deep snow and was so proud of the beautiful pink, lavender and cerulean blue highlights I achieved. They brought the snow to life. I decided to try to capture some of this winter beauty with my current abstract painting style. This was a challenge and working with white watercolor is a difficult. It looks so flat! But I learned alot and tried something new and so all’s well that ends well.

Flow of Nature - Winter

I did like the sense of snow being blown by the wind in this abstract world. Feels very cold.

January 8, 2012 January 8, 2012

My mind seems tired and lacking in focus. I see that in my latest painting. As I mentioned I was not very happy with the painting below.

The Sky Wept - the painting I painted over

Sooo… I decided to scrap it and use the watercolor board for a new painting. First I decided on a landscape orientation and painted over the surface with gesso.

Gessoed layer

Next I put on a layer of Black magic ink and another layer of gesso – both applied with rough cross hatching.  I followed that with a rough application of white watercolor. At this point I didn’t really know what I wanted to do so I decided to paint the sadness and sorrow and lack of focus that I am feeling. For the first layer I poured and dripped Venetian Brown, Cobalt Violet and Payne’s Gray with a little Burnt Sienna.

First paint layer

I continued to drop, spray, float and splash paint until the paintin g felt finished. Very bleak but this creation got me back in the studio and put a brush in my hand so that is all good. Ken would be pleased.

Sorrow 1

 

2011 in Review – Linda Halcomb’s Blog January 1, 2012

Last year I posted my year end review. I don’t know if this is a good thing to do but I am posting this summary in the hope of encouraging others to blog. It has enriched my life and introduced me to new friends. I hope you will now consider sharing your passion. A big thank you to the WordPress helper monkeys!

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 25,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 9 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.