Fall's Ending

Fall's Ending, a photo by linfrye on Flickr.

10" x 13" Watercolor
Arches 140#CP

For the last week or so when I go out to feed the kitties, the water in their drinking bowl has frozen over. Quite honestly, I know it's been cold in the mornings, but by afternoon, we've been outside with a light jacket. No longer.

This weekend seems to have turned the season. The potted basil on my side porch has been completed blackened by the frosts, there are a few leaves here and there, but those are mostly brown, and the leaves underfoot are all crunchy. Yes, the end of fall ...

A while ago, I was asked to share a bit about the workshops I took during Art of the Carolinas ...and I'll do over time. It had been a few years since I took several classes over the four-day period, and this year was one of those. Instead of all watercolor classes, I decided to try something very different - acryllic and abstract. To be honest, I am feeling that 'change ahead' nudge that often accompanies a style, thinking process or something else of change in my painting. It happens more frequently than I acknowledge - where I find I am being internally 'directed' to try something new, favoring different photographs or paintings, and I feel a real SHOVE to try something different. It was with these feelings that I took those 'different' classes.

I thoroughly enjoyed all of them ... and they have me thinking and viewing my paintings in a new way. So instead of simply posting what I painted in those classes, I'm trying to 'think' out my thought processes, what I'm noticing needs something else, practice a bit of the things I want to change, try some techniques that will move me where I may be headed, and then write a bit about what was involved.

This piece, for instance, is one of those 'nudges' that may not be fully realized, but is the first of something changing.

I want to work a bit on my brushstrokes to make them more expressive... To make my lights lighter and my darks darker ... This piece uses 'some' of that - but not to the extent I want to go -- but it's a start.

And another turn in the road's journey .....