Painting In Progress

Here's a painting that I started last night.  I told my husband that I had an idea that I needed to draw out "real quick" and I disappeared into my studio with my art journal.....20 minutes later he comes into my studio to see what I'm doing and sees me in the middle of painting this branch onto a 16x20 canvas .....umm.....what?

                                                                           

 I figured that if I was going to take the time to get out my paints anyway to do a sample of it in my journal, then why not just get it started straight onto a canvas and cut out the middleman?

So at first I grabbed a small 4"square canvas...nah.....

a bit bigger....

hmm....6x8?

The next thing I know, I decided on this large 16x20.  It already had book pages collaged onto half of it from years ago.  I once had another idea for this canvas, which involved glueing the pages to it,  but I never finished it, and can't even remember what my big idea was.  So the canvas gets a second chance...

the underpainting

I started with this soft rusty-peach wash, then loosely painted branches, then leaves.  This bottom picture is how it looked when I left it last night after working on it for about 30 minutes.  I liked the underpainting so much that I almost couldn't go over it, but I decided I could just do another painting like this later if I want.

 Today I couldn't wait to get back to it to get started adding the aqua over it.  I'm letting little bits of the warm underpainting and paper show through here and there.  I'm not sure exactly where it's headed, but I can't wait to find out.