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Completed painting. Kimberly's feedback gave me the extra encouragement I needed for the final push! Grateful.

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A last little Hawaii still life! Not sure about the rest but I love the striped towel on the chair in the background.

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Fruit bowl

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Experimenting with a hybrid approach of combining glazing/optical layering with direct painting!

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I’m not totally sure this is done yet but it’s getting close

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Nursing

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Just posting how KT showed the 3 versions at Art Attack, which helped me appreciate them much more than I previously did.

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Just posting how KT showed the 3 versions at Art Attack, which helped me appreciate them much more than I previously did.

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Started on an underpainting for translating my last color study onto a larger surface! This was my second attempt at gluing oil primed linen onto a birch panel my boyfriend made for me. Finally no air bubbles the second time around (using enough glue made the difference). Excited to be painting!

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Here's a progress update... Working from my blurry photo reference is a challenge! I'm really liking the limited palette. I could do another term in orange-blue. Is the redhead's face too dark and undefined? Are her legs too small?

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Used ult blue + cad orange tertiaries for satelliting.

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12x16. Worked on this one on and off through December and this is where it ended up before I head out to travel tomorrow! Still plenty of things that need adjusting, but I'm happy to let it rest for now. It felt like a playground for experimentation and I don't know how many times I scraped it down, remixed, and tried again. Learned so much and always still so, so much to learn. 🏕️

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Midnight

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Still life collection with gramma’s pallet 

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Some people say, "Three-month-old babies are the hardest!" My child is now two and a half months old, and I totally get what they mean.

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A little koi pond study :)

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As a person with a touch of dyslexia, I don't think I'll ever be able to spell gouache without looking. I've been having fun with this guy and am excited to get back to the cantaloupe when I have longer time chunks to spend.

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Thank you for all comments!!! Coco has her grandma’s visiting (my mom in law) finally. She will be back to Japan next weekend, so I would love to spend family time while she’s here!

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Finally done with this one (I think?)! Really happy with this and I think the overall lighting effect is working. Went a little bigger, and that felt great! She's still a lil' sweetie though-- 8.5 x 11 inches.

I may revisit that teensy warm/cool one I posted below so I can get more technical practice in-- feeling the urge to scrape something! but I'm too attached to this one now, haha.

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Playing with some little studies in Hawaii

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working on drawings from a photo while travelling

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This is wild! A sun beam back lit the lil part of my paper that was hanging below the board on my easel and showed me how to improve my painting! The idea that warm light is not the same quality across a plane unless the light is very far away or incredibly bright. The photo on the left is the piece with the sun beam instruction and the photo on the right is the current state of the piece. I think I will have to go in and listen to the sun’s instructions!!

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Never thought I'd do a fourth one, but wanted to do a weirdo version closer to how I like to paint. May come back to it after a few days, but generally feeling ready to move on from this motif.

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Never thought I'd do a fourth one, but wanted to do a weirdo version closer to how I like to paint. May come back to it after a few days, but generally feeling ready to move on from this motif.

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Okay okay! A bit of a breakthrough with the gouache today. The main difference is that I switched my white from titanium (permanent) white to zinc white for my general mixes, and am able to get more luminous, chromatic lights! The titanium white was turning everything sort of chalky and pastely, so I'm using it only for very light, less chromatic areas. I'm feeling excited!

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Tertiaries mixed from ult blue + cad orange

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Finally reunited with my paint this week! 🥲🙏

And finally, finally satelliting! Enjoyed playing around with comparing what the same local color set might look like in warm vs. cool lighting and it was so mindbendy and fun.

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Last life room session of the year! So glad I made the trek.

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Thinking about what KT said in her lecture. The image is made by last year’s templates

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Trying to translate the principles into gouache (regular, not acrylic)— Oh my gawd this was so much harder than I thought it would be! Hah. On the first slide I painted the templates with direct color mixing. The template in the second slide I tried out a more watercolory approach where I toned the whole light area with my orange and the whole shadow area with my blue… Although I’m not sure I like the result, the lights definitely feel glowy in an interesting way!

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Something new painting. My sweetie has gotten the two months vaccinations today. I hope she will not have any fever or extreme fussiness while a couple of days

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Finally getting back into this guy! Only using a neutral mix + one cool and one warm tertiary. Lots of interesting groupings happened because of this, which I actually like a lot. I'm still a little unsure about the dark shadow on the front of the book, and I may lighten it up later to see how that looks. I'm so surprised at the nice sense of light, despite the limited temperatures! I especially like it post-scrape. (I'll post pre-scrape below).

I think I'm ready to jump into satelliting on this next! I'll probably start a new one, but maybe continue working on this little guy as my "weird" iteration :)

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I don't think a painting is ever done, but it's time to move on and this one's going in the MCA Open House!

I'm excited about the choreography of shapes, and continue to ask the question, how do I paint relationships rather than things?

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Looking forward to opening this back up when I get home this upcoming week! I have some pushing and pulling to do with relative value/temp.. Thinking of draping fabric over the blue-purple lefthand wall for a subtle little something else over there.. will likely add more purples to some of the zones, too. Feedback/ideas welcome!

Hope y'all are having a fabulous holiday weekend! ✨

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KT didn’t see your swatch below. Same green on back wall as cup but must be relative and reading different. x

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Portrait - cool light warm shadow study - AND Happy Thanksgiving!

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Portrait - cool light warm shadow study - AND Happy Thanksgiving!

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Probably my last post till we come back! Spent some time playing with this motif - trying to stay really warm but still experience meaningful temp changes. Lots of learning

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Wonderful, full day in the studio yesterday. Finished this one; so happy with it. She was very generous with me and let me keep coming back again and again and again with new forms of clarity and revelation. SO Grateful.

“The Annunciation”

Oil in Paper, 16” x 20”

2025

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Happy holidays!!!!

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Color study based on my last still life setup. The last lecture inspired me to create the feeling of a separate/distinct space to the right side of the light shard.

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Boy I'm thankful these paintings let me call a finish before the Thanksgiving meal. I can finally relax.

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Boy I'm thankful these paintings let me call a finish before the Thanksgiving meal. I can finally relax.

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Oh yeah, I think I FINALLY started to learn about MCA. On the middle of the figure, I could use Diagonal in the Vermeer painting. Other two figures are still looking for the beautiful shape, or line connection (???). But the middle one is a big step for me

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Some sexy new entry-points 🤷‍♀️

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Another orange blue temp gesture on top of my original cool light pass. Started by gridding out and very graphically blocking in light shapes with light value blue. Had a lot of fun breaking this down! 

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It’s not my favorite right now, but I think some of the changes feel maybe a bit painful because I had to knock things back. SO much learning about shadows and reflected light. I have a lot more room to grow!

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Continuing on to explore some fleshy interests

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Went more blue with the light in class today. Felt really odd as I was putting the paint down but stepping back, I’m liking it. Gotta trust the process!

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Someone found my dog in this gouache study. 

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Someone found my dog in this gouache study. 

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I think I'm at a stopping point on this for now. I'm hoping to let this one show a lot of the process. The over/under the grid is interesting to me, letting the right side retreat into coolness and bringing the foreground forward.

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16x20 I’m not sure it’s fine to share here, but we did those master copy exercise on winter term last year, so we might do the same exercise with De Heem still life this term

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Still tweaking here and there. Just did a glaze of transparent orange over all my lights which was fun to get a little bit of heat back into my lights 

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I still don't know how to create zones. I can identify them in other people's work but it's foreign to how I have worked in the past which is to distribute colors evenly throughout. Appreciate any suggestions.

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Working on some ideas for fabric drawing/painting now.

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Every time Kimberly says that doing a three value study on a regular basis will change our painting practice, I feel a pull. But I've been resisting it because my image is so complex, and my photo is so terribly dark that I have to make up huge portions of the image. Attempts to make a template haven't been successful. So I finally tackled the three value study today... And it felt sooo good to go back to the bones, and retrace my steps to figure ground relationships. I am a sucker for triangles, and I was delighted to find the triangle of the woman's bent knee poking up like an orca whale's dorsal fin, and the weirdo triangles framing the other woman.

One of the most gratifying things for me about the Atelier thus far is how I've learned so many strategies for returning to the same image. I cannot believe that I'm not bored out of my mind, but here I am still in love and returning. I was telling my husband that it's like intimacy and commitment--so rewarding to learn how to sustain this level of attention.

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WIP - warm light pass 3, close to finish? cold light pass 2 

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WIP - warm light pass 3, close to finish? cold light pass 2 

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Had fun killing all the colors of the "dead" painting and then started a 3rd one.

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A still life set up for a companion painting to the epic theatre painting. I want to explore light rising in this one

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I'm liking the simpler shapes and size relationships better, but I'm still working out value, temperature, and saturation relationships. I scraped the left side and brought the value contrasts down. The right side ended up greener than I intended, but it made for a very weird mood which is kind of fun.

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I followed the last presentation with the part I missed with the fussy baby. Then my husband, Ken, and I discussed about what is Art- it’s always fun part! As a beginner, it’s easier to say “this is a skillful work “ when we see accurate painting. Or easier to say “I like this “ with a viewer’s favorite subject. But the tools which we learned here allows artists to keep interest in painting itself. It’s really forgiving and freedom. Thank you again all here, and I’m so grateful what we have in just one term. Hope to see you on Tuesday!

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Satellite version beside cold light version in progress

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Painting this feels like improv--I'm doing things I've never done before and making some wild moves that may or may not work out. The only thing worse than failing is being stuck in perfectionism / knowing how my painting will turn out before I begin it. In the past, I used to enjoy the first pass and then be too afraid to "ruin" the painting to keep returning to do more than a few edits. So grateful for how this program is opening me up to focus on exploration rather than "making a fucking masterpiece." (Scraping and even ruining some small studies was incredibly liberating for me earlier in the quarter.) Yesterday when I was painting the begonia shadows, I burst into tears from the sheer joy of making those marks. So thankful for the safe and supportive community that we have built together where risktaking and vulnerability can thrive.

Notes to self -- resolve couch temperature and jeans issues. Do I want to paint the curtain in temperature or leave in black and white like the figures?

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Morning Kimberly Trowbridge are these more the colours you are talking about re back blue sheet and putting Magenta back into the curtain? Not finished yet and every time I do something I get fingermarks all over it. Such a messy painter.

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Friday liferoom. I was a total hot mess this whole week, and painting this completely changed my brain for the better. I love doing this!

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Friday liferoom

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Theatre with cool light / warm shadows - only orange and blue. 

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Theatre with cool light / warm shadows - only orange and blue. 

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Moving to a cool light scenario was very challenging for me - and I don’t know if this is hitting the mark or not. Suggestions welcome!

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Not trying to make a pretty picture, just noodling around with my crayons to get familiar with the shapes of light and dark...

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I took my crayons to the mechanics and enjoyed testing out different compositional zones. The bottom is an attempt at mapping the eye path in terms of where I wanted the most emphasis... It ended up going in a different direction but was still a worthwhile exercise.

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Using Figma to try it out in digital form

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first study, more to happen tomorrow

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Epic Theatre x 4 Value/Wl/CL/Satellite - FINAL

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Epic Theatre x 4 Value/Wl/CL/Satellite - FINAL

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Take your pic KT this one of ‘FINAL’ below. Getting so messy have to stop now. x

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Dreaming this painting into being a little at a time!

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This one has really been a series of “I can’t wait to scrape it down” haha… Definitely an adventure!

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Where I ended up! Would love to keep developing the pink/pale fabric, but I'll let her rest for now

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Alchemy!! I understand the excitement.. Y’all might be seeing these yellow-greens a lot now that I know how to mix them..

Warm Tertiary (Cad Org + Ult Blue) + Cad Yellow = 😍

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Another one! Maybe my favorite little weirdo yet

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Worked on the pomegranate a bit. Final update for now!

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Where this one landed last night. May set it aside and start on some satellite practice and come back to it with more energy later!

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Here’s my latest version. It’s feeling close to finished to me but would love feedback on it. This is under a warm interior light, later I can post one under daylight.

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Got to stop fiddling with it. Can always see things wrong with it and unfinished. Will upload finalised 4 group shortly. KT thinking int he big one could possibly make the drapery leaning a little more to the orange WDYT? Also the blue on the far right with the pepper shaker shadow on bluer/more saturated or is it okay?

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Some total weirdos. So much fun!!!

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Using leftover mud from the epic palette 

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Using leftover mud from the epic palette 

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Taking a cue from Nate, a pinch of Kimmy’s ‘a little bit of whatever dude” and used what’s left on the palette to throw together a color world to see what will happen. So fun!

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Got back into the painting after getting some energy from the side piece! Lots to figure out, but I’m really playing with some hue + temp shifts in reflected light and finding that my initial calibration is a bit too spicy - lots to learn here to get more precise!

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Loving this so much. These little templates are healing my soul!

I found it particularly interesting, in the bottom left one, pushing an “orange” hue in three different directions to achieve a “cooler” shadow (pushing a yellow-orange more toward green, a red-orange more toward purple, and a middle orange more toward neutral 🤯) ! I think it’s working? Was really fun to think about in any case!

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Did another light pass on the fabric form

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Left Value and Satellite, Right WL/CS and CL/WS - 8.5” x 10”.

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Satellite Epic theatre not yet finalised see larger version below. Will have a got at it again tomorrow.

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Quick 1st pass today. Decided to stay small 8.5 x 10” as way too many nuances on value, temp (light and shadow of different surfaces) saturation to get anything done before Thursday on the 12 x 16. But also very difficult with such small areas. Felt a little overwhelmed by it. Wasn’t sure if I was able to do colour as I have previously. Always doubting. May go back in tomorrow and give it another ago and some areas needed finishing and touching up.

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Epic Theater V1 WIP, orange/blue intensity

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Epic Theater V1 WIP, orange/blue intensity

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Went on down to scrape town, still so much to do. Lots that I want to renegotiate, maybe push my warm and cool neutrals more, push some values more.

This is 12x16, which is the largest I've ever painted 😅 but after the initial trepidation, it feels really nice to have my work take up a bit more space in my little studio corner. It's not as containable as my smaller pieces and it insists on being seen when I walk in. There's definitely something to be said for allowing my practice to take up more space both physically and figuratively in my life. Just some 10pm musings over here!

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I feel like I may always need a moody figure/portrait going with the epic scenes. Let myself go with blending, but kept the limited orange blue palette

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First pass on the fabric form

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Who knew there were that many tertiary neutrals to arm wrestle?

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After a good sleep and some fresh air, maybe I can figure out the rest of this puzzle. Haven’t decided on the windows and the left and back walls. Got obsessed with details and skipped over that part.

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After scraping. Maybe it’s too early, maybe because of the canvas this process took off lots of paints. I felt like Ohhh waste money… 16x20 inches on canvas

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Epic research: satellite and intensity. I didn’t touch on the left piece, but updated the right one. 9x6 each on arches paper. Cad red and cobalt blue.

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Finally got something onto paper. Thought I should use up my dried up paint that I mixed a while back, and make a semblance of a temp block in!! Will mix some colour next.

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Calling this one good! More on the sharp and graphic side— not quite sure how I feel about that, but I do feel grateful for all the learning and the opportunity to be here and spend so much time in conversation with paint, brush, surface, color, shape, body, heart, mind.. so much goodness. On to more color and (hopefully) loosening up a bit! 😆

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Here, I begin applying Mars Red/Mars Black + U Blue, using cold wax as the medium. I am painting with oil paint without gamsol on the same surface that was first-painted with acrylic. Again, it’s 16x16 inches on canvas

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Another one of these, post scrape!

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Satelliting into that temperature painting but keeping it very mild. And living out my purple paper dreams.

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Theatre with satellite colors - started over - first pass.

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Theatre with satellite colors - started over - first pass.

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This is where I am today and I have submitted all that I have for tomorrow. This made a lot more sense after doing the satellite rocks.

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Finally getting those neutrals somewhere I like better! Going to reorganize my brain and do some satellite exercises today I think.