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Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Minus the Rainbow

Picture
It's amazing how much better I'm in the Flow when I paint every day.

This past week has been horrendous.  My son Brandon's car blew a head gasket a week and a half ago, so I've been driving him to college and to work.  Then, my husband's car broke down last week... so I've basically been playing bus driver and getting everyone where they need to go, and squeezing in my day job, which has been leaving me NO time to paint. 

They're both off today, which means I have been really excited that I'd get some studio time, but I woke up without the slightest clue what I wanted to do, other than I wanted to paint a bird . I wasn't sure if I wanted to use a brush or knife, and I wasn't sure what kind of bird I wanted to paint.  Then I thought I'd work on my landscape, changed my mind about that, and finally settled on a really big knife painting of a rainbow lorikeet, since I've been working a lot in dark colors and I thought it might be fun to do something bright and feather-textured.

So, I worked on the background and more detail-necessary parts of this little guy.  I dunno, he's sort of looking more like an Indian Ringneck parakeet than a Lori to me, at least for the moment, but I'm sure that'll change when he gets his coat of many colors.

I love parrots.  I had budgies when I was a kid, and a mischievous lovebird named Gizmo who enjoyed escaping her cage while I was at school and flinging everything off my dresser and then running to hte edge to watch where it fell.  She also would fly up to the ceiling fan (which was always off unless she was securely locked in) and land on it, and the momentum of her landing would push the blades a little bit and she'd go for a ride.  Since then, I've had a Noble macaw, a couple of parrotlets, cockatiels and lovebirds, and currently a Senegal parrot who is just a sweetheart and really enjoys it when I spend time in the studio (where she lives... well away from access to paint, and fumes).  Cleveland Metroparks Zoo and Nashville zoo have lorikeet exhibits where you can go into their habitat and feed them nectar... they are such colorful little clowns.

Anyway, here's stage one on this guy... and it's a big canvas, 18 x 24, same size as my flamenco dancer.  I'm not sure I'm going to knife in the background at all, I kind of like the way it is.

Hopefully I'll get some time to finish him tomorrow, or at least make a dent!

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