Wednesday 22 January 2014

Stretching high and digging deep


The weather was so hot here last week that the paint was drying on the brush! There was no chance that I could do any gelli-printing or gessoing on the page, so I squeezed paint directly on to this page and spread it around with a plastic scraper. It gave me a background of discrete blocks of colour rather than my usual merging colours.

Then I grabbed another colour from the paintbox and stencilled. These are not the sorts of colours I usually use together, either, but I was on a roll and enjoying my playtime :)

Standing back I decided it needed some yellow so I drew the circles directly with the dropper from the ink bottle. Now it felt more balanced.

Next came the stamping and the black fleur-de-lis over the original stencilling. At that point the page was crying out for a hand reaching out. I drew round my hand with a black pen, but it didn't show up too well against the colourful background, so I pulled out the correction pen and changed it to white instead.

Now it was time for the words. The hand was stretching out, and 'stretch' is my word for the year. I imagined myself stretching my hand up and the little figure in my head became off-balance. And there it was - I can stretch, but if I'm not firmly anchored, I will fall over.

I need to stretch high and dig deep.





4 comments:

  1. I love these words...and your art is beautiful. Hello to you, my friend!

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  2. Just beautiful, Tracy! You know I love your thoughts, also this time.
    It's hard to believe that it's so warm where you live, as it has just started snowing here in Germany (very late this year).

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  3. Wonderful page, Tracy. Just love those striking colours and the hand stretching out in the middle. I always enjoy what you write as well - so true that we need to be anchored.

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  4. Tracy, I love this page. Bright, bold color and pattern really gets me excited! And we all need to stretch and reach from time to time. It's hard to imagine it being so hot that your paint dries on the brush...as I write, the snow is falling yet again and it's a bone-chilling 19 degrees here in Pennsylvania!

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