Summertime Promises

The May long weekend heralds in the promise of summer and is filled with so much hope. We are dreaming of lazy long weekends, adventurous tours, what to plant in the garden… you know the feeling. I don’t know about you, but my soul has been longing to be warm so we can just chill. Our season on the East Coast is so short. We long for its arrival through multiple cold and dreary months.

We have so many happy plans and ideas all to make memories that will last season over season. Gardening is a big part of our summer. We typically garden on our upper decks to try to outwit the local whitetail deer population. This results in our home being adorned with an impressive number of hanging baskets. We plant them with whatever catches our eye in the garden centres. Some years it may be purples, sometimes yellow and sometimes a happy blending of many colours.

This hanging basket that I painted “Summertime Promises” filled my heart with joy watching it grow. I mean, you can’t get much more perfect than with yellow, vermillion and shades of maroon all on one blossom. I knew when I purchased it that it would be painted. I mean how could it not be? I took many reference photos, and as often, I tended to prefer the ones taken in full sun. What do you think?

A few weeks ago I decided it was time to start a few more poured paintings this is the first image that came to mind. I sketched it out with a bit more detail than usual around where the leaves and stems were. When you pour a painting, the placement of the colours may be less important that the structure of the subject. As I started working on this, I kept thinking that maybe, just maybe it should be painted as a large, juicy oil painting. What do you think?

Work in progress

Step by step process below. Many pours later and a pound of masking (just kidding), the underpainting is revealed. From this point I added in some brushwork to complete the painting.

Lessons Learned

Sometimes I may be a bit impatient. Unfortunately, I may not wait long enough for the paper to dry before I apply the next round of masking compound.

Why am I calling this out you ask? Well the masking will seep into the dampness of the paper. You cannot see it go, but the area around the bit with fresh masking will also resist paint – creating halos around the areas. Not at all a desirable look in a crisp painting.

You can pour until your heart’s content and it will not allow the paint to get any deeper in hue. So, this had to become a mixed media painting. I had to crack out the acrylics to get the deep background colour.

Sometimes this is a lesson I feel the need to relearn over and over.