June 1, 2022 — The dramatic art of painting. It is really is quite dramatic, the painting process. It calls forth sweat, tears, songs, rants, raving gratitudes, tantrums, doldrums, parental anxiety, along with ecstasy, swooning, love at first sight, love everlasting, punchy hilarity, glowing satisfaction, among other dramatic states. Throw in some zen calm occasionally, there’s that, too. All relationships have a few calm spots. Someone asked me the other day on the phone, “well, isn’t it relaxing?” OMG, no! It’s absolutely intense. It must be that color is a force to be reckoned with, and when you’re around yellow, I should say YELLOW, or BLUE, or RED, and the infinite colors and shades they create, it’s hard to explain the effect they have on one’s nervous system. But you enjoy it? Yes, very much so! It’s just not relaxing, and I often come home and go straight to a power nap.
Today’s dramatic art of painting involved some final touch ups on Pele (very satisfied! Heart skipping some beats!) and did the underpaint and composition for the next painting of a closeup of frangipani blossoms. Yes, this is also called plumeria, I just looked that up. I read Shark Dialogues by Kiana Davenport, while in Hawaii, and the flights over and back across the Pacific. Nice long historical fiction about the islands. Super interesting and definitely added dimension to my trip. In it, they always refer to the fragrant frangipani, which nobody every heard of that I was hanging out with. I suspected it was another name for plumeria, and that is correct. So many colors of frangipani on the islands and, indeed, so fragrant. It’s what they make the leis out of primarily. The one I am painting is yellow (YELLOW) and pink and orange. I did an intense aquamarine underpaint, (speaking of intense), in this case meaning highly saturated. Decided to try taking the underpaint in the other direction, as in cool. Whereas the blossoms are warm. I think it’s going to be okay. Because it’s so HAWAI!!
Getting into our heat season here. Talk about dramatic art of painting. The heat is on! Only 90 today, thought, but already too hot. Wait till it’s 110. Not sure how that’s going to work. Those were the days when I turned on Tom’s little AC unit and said hell with the fumes, I’ll breathe them just to be cool. I did stop at Home Depot yesterday and bought a round plastic recycle bin, which I filled ⅔ with water and stepped inside throughout the day to keep my support socks with the toes cut out nice and wet, along with the bottoms of my shorts and my wrist sheaths (more socks cut off and pulled over my arms) ((so I don’t get paint on my inner wrist and forearms. I also dipped my shirt in a couple times and wore it wrung out, along with wet purple bandana around my neck. It should be interesting.
Dang I forgot to take a pic of the frangipani composition on the aquamarine underpaint. You’ll have to see the touched up Pele instead. Oh, and a warm invite to sign up for the art giveaway!