Blocked !

So, put up a display of the six neutral , textured paintings and ugh , they looked awful together. Rethink but unfortunately then became completely blocked with the work. Oh dear ! So much about painting is done in your head ( or is that just me ? )

So, almost a week on, I have painted feeble paintings this week that need to be, ' tossed! ' ... Well tossed metaphorically. I mean painted over.

I have been avoiding the studio like the plague, procrastinating and finding many other things to do. Does it sound familiar ? Well actually, not usually for me...

So, how to counter a , ' block.' 

Tidy up in the studio. Good idea.... It has got overrun with paintings piled up and stacked randomly.

Take the display down , catalogue it and put it away....remember that I liked those paintings 

individually, I just didn't like them together.

Change your pallettes.

Return to graphite ( err think about that one )

Make a frame to try individual paintings in, to test their validity

Have a group crit to try and help me over the block

Prime some boards so that I am ready if I go on a roll

Often painting feels like perhaps surfing does, you are just trying to catch a wave ( roll ) Sometimes it just doesn't happen . You just have to keep trying ( she says )

I am in that studio today for all day .... All I have to do at the end of the day is have four Daily

paintings completed ! Four half hour paintings ..... That 's all !

Look out of my kitchen window .......georgeous......white......flat sky (full of snow ) ....big tone changes but nothing in between .....

Here was my first one , painted over a dark under painting. In comparison to the real thing above, mine is browner, above is bluer. I love the light when it's snowed ..... Have really found the dark January light hard to deal with generally. Long, long nights, sometime the day just doensn't get light enough all day.....

Anyway, when you are painting you are looking for a sense of, ' rightness.'When you get that, stop ! You might later then change your mind but that's your choice. The relationship between the artist and their painting is sometimes a fickle one. You like them one day but don't like them the next. He ho.

This one feels fussy.It took me much longer than the half hour allocated. Try again ! Stay in the studio !

Walk out of the back gate into the woods.Through the woods onto the hills. Georgeous day in paint and snow ! Enjoyed the paint , even if I paint over them tomorrow.

The final four today on the black studio wall.