July 8, 2009
Went home for lunch and worked on several of the rough patinas I posted this morning. Added a running Kid to the lightning scene:

This illustrates the Kid running along the ridges near Picket Post. Also did another one, using a failed board (obliterated most of it with gray, but left a couple places for the original underpainting to peek through, and also left a yellow swatch, that is a pretty good take of lighting coming through the clouds. Oh, Happy Accident No. 2!

Also started another patina with integrity:

By patina with integrity, I mean that when puddles of paint don't look contrived, they have a certain integrity (to my eye). Usually, as soon as I begin to try and make them into something, the integrity starts to disappear. It's a very odd and intriguing phenom, but it's true. And so I start by loading up my brush and laying in an undercoat, all the while looking for integrity, then add layers with as much spontaneity as I can. Like I said, as soon as I start aiming at some sort of scene the magic seems to go away, but if I keep coming back to letting it be what it wants to be, many times it ends up like this. I'm not exactly sure what it is, perhaps clouds of sheep jumping. Oh, wait! See the sheep dog, at lower right? That's it! I planned it all along.

Kathy and I are going on a dinner and movie date this evening. We got an invite to see a sneak preview movie at the Camelview Five. Review tomorrow.

"Life's under no obligation to give us what we expect. We take what we get and are thankful it's no worse than it is."
—Margaret Mitchell