Today, I started from the above working in acrylic. And how got you there, you ask?? I began by toning an 11 x 14 canvas board with quinacridone red, then printed over with small hand cut block prints. I painted negatively with a mixture of phthalo turquoise, permanent green light and white to create the tree. Then I went back in to paint on the branches with more red. Today, I added fruit and leaves cut from catalogue pages from around the turn of the last century, fixing them to the board with matte medium. I printed a funny little bird--one of my own blocks--and began to add color to the fruit and bird--hansa medium, phthalo blue and black were added to the rest of the palette. I went in with a black micron pen to create dark edges around elements in the painting.
There's a lot going on, but I'm pretty pleased with it. Oh, and I forgot--along the way the sky turned from turquoise to blue--sometimes, life is like that!
