Madeline's Trees

When Roxie wears her new purple coat she looks like she is wearing pajamas.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!  I'm laughing with you, baby girl, not at you.  The coat seems a bit big, however the next size down was definitely too small.  Curiously shaped dogs need curiously shaped coats.  I'll get right on that.

But first, here are Madeline's Trees:

Yummy.  That's an 8" x 10" canvas panel.  I guess you could call this one a happy accident; I got inspired by a video I watched so went to the hardware store for some enamel paint.  I was using a blank panel to wipe off the brush a bit before sticking it in the sink, then on a whim dribbled the black enamel on the panel and let it dry.  When I added color the painting wanted to be trees.  Madeline's Trees.  I like it.

Now, here's the story of the happy accident I was talking about yesterday.  I wish I had thought to take a picture of the panel first - it's 12" x 16" and I had painted the background ages ago intending it to be some kind of underwater scene.  I found it in a random stack of stuff the other day and pulled it out.  Then I watched that video that inspired me to go buy enamel paint - I got black and white.  In my initial messing around nonsense, I dribbled some white enamel on this panel.  For no good reason.  Later I was watching another video and the artist had painted a grove of trees using lots of color and white, but instead of white trees on a colored background, she had colored trees on a white background.  I thought it was cool, and my underwater panel was a perfect place to try the same effect.  But I didn't trust myself to freehand the trees, so I cut out a template using a page from a big sketch book.  This had the potential to go downhill fast, because I was attempting to put a bunch of paint on top of thin paper.  Again, I didn't think to take a picture first, but here's what the template looked like after I used it and the paint had dried - I had to peel bits of it apart and it curled up:

It's an upside down hula skirt.  So, throwing caution to the wind, I lined up my stencil as best I could and slapped on some white paint.  When I was done and I peeled the stencil off the panel ... it was wicked.  But in a happy accident kind of way, I liked the painting better when I flipped it upside down and used the white bits as the trees after all.  Here it is:

All that background stuff was the old paint, including the random red dots:

In the close up you can see where I dribbled the white enamel.  Not that it added anything to the painting, but it doesn't detract either.  It's just another piece of the painting's history.  The happy accident painting that needs a name.

I've got a third happy accident, too, inspired by the Valentine explosion in my sketch book which I love love love.  This is still sitting on the table behind me, very wet.  I think I'm going to call it Three Pink Roses:

Oh yeah, baby.  Awesome.