Go. Wash.

I sat down for a while today and finally painted something.  They aren't my best paintings to date, but I look on them as a kind of re-start.  It's been such a long time since I've mixed paints and used real paintbrushes and thought through what the final outcome would be that I'm calling them successes.  Both are from photos I took in San Francisco back in July and they are very different from one another.

This man was sitting in Union Square, watching a troupe of dancers rehearse.  Dr. SmartyPants and I were across the way doing the same thing when I caught sight of him.  He had been looking at his cell phone for most of the time, but suddenly looked up and seemed quite taken with the modern dance.  The painting is a bit muddy and boring, I think - but I like the composition and the solitude.  Maybe he just needs a jaunty red hat to break up all that gray.  I did this in my little Maruman folding watercolor book, and I kind of stretched the paper's ability to handle so much water, I'm afraid.  I would have been much happier on some hot press paper.  Maybe I'll try it again.

The seagull was sitting on a piling at Fisherman's Wharf and was not in the least bit concerned with me.  I used black gouache for the bird and I like the contrast in intensity with the cyan background.  I did this in my large watercolor Moleskine, which handled the paint nicely.  

I have a few ideas floating around that will allow me to incorporate some mixed media elements into some larger pieces, but they are still fairly nebulous at this point.  It all stems from a conversation I had recently with some friends who were giving me a hard time about knitting and embroidery - that it didn't fit my image of pink-haired punk-rocker.  I'm going to have to find a way to show them how very wrong they are...