My kids are back at school after a summer chocked full of track meets, soccer tournaments, and a taekwondo tournament. This year, they are at the same school (one in high school, one in middle school) and I am no longer on the PTO (different school). This has freed up a little bit of time and I am working on prioritizing more painting.
I went a whole year without painting something new and I felt it. When I was getting ready for Art in the Barn this year, I had no new paintings to share. Part of it was nice that I didn’t need to frame anything or order new stickers and prints, but I also felt like I had nothing to show for the year.
Instead I focused on the layout of my booth. Considering I sold more this year that in all of the previous years, I’d say it was successful. But also reaching out to my different networks of people was probably the biggest reason for my increased sales this year.
The success of Art in the Barn this year helped motivate me to make painting a much higher priority. This is the first FINISHED painting I have to show for it. (I started another painting and then stopped when it got frustrating, but I’ll post about that later).
This is Lone Peak. She’s the major peak that I can see from my street in the Wasatch Mountains and the subject of lots of Instagram posts of mine in the 14 years I’ve lived here. Just search #ourwasatchview on Instagram and you can see the various ways she’s shown off her beauty over the years.
This painting was from a photo I took in mid-May when Utah’s spring weather was acting especially drunk. We were thrown wind, rain, hail, thunderstorms, sunshine, and occasional snow this spring. Spring in Utah is always unpredictable, which makes it highly entertaining.
To make the sky and blanket of clouds, I submerged my paper in a tub of water for 20-30 minutes before I started painting. The paper I used is a 300lb cotton, cold press watercolor paper from Fluid that holds up really well when submerged like that. It only warps minimally when wet and I don’t even need to tape it down when I’m painting. When I watch the video, I realize I should have pulled my camera to be closer when painting the sky. It’s fun to watch the paint spread out in high speed.
You can watch the timelapse video I made from this painting on my Instagram here. It was a really fun process and one where I could tell I was “in the zone” because I finished it in about two afternoons. I did go back and forth on whether to add black ink like I often do, but in the end, decided to leave it be. I didn’t want to mess with the clouds and fog.
Now, what to paint next…