I saw a painting on etsy.com recently that I immediately fell in love with. I had actually planned on buying it if it was still available after my month of travel is over, and then a friend offered to try to paint it for me. For some reason, yesterday I decided to go to the craft store for a huge canvas to combat this ever-present beige wall problem, only to find that canvas was 40% off for all sizes! It was a deal I couldn't pass up and, although I did get a big single canvas and I didn't get pieces of canvas as large as the original painting (big canvas is pricey, sale or not), I did get something I could work with for my own interpretation of the "Mystic Tree".

Since I was working with 12x24 canvas instead of 12x36, my dimensions were a little bit different than in the original. I ultimately decided to do three pieces instead of four as a result. I went back and forth about background colors - it didn't seem to feel right if any of the four colors used in the original were taken out - but I finally settled on red, orange and green. Each canvas is started with a layer of yellow to add some unison to the whole picture. It took longer than I had expected - painting requires more attention to detail than pastels, which is probably why I generally prefer pastels to acrylics - but I am so, so happy with the result. Once I get the pieces sealed, they're going up on the large [and still very beige] living room wall where I hung the pastel from the previous post (it seemed big while I was working on it, but is truly dwarfed by the size of the wall), and the pastel can be reallocated somewhere else in the house.

In "looking forward" news... in coming weeks I have trips to two very different parts of the country - El Paso, TX and Juneau, AK/Whistler, BC. Coincidentally the photo project ("The Challenge") will be kicking off as well, so expect to see awesome things. I do!

Back to the beige wall problem. A recurring problem for me is that every painting or drawing I do turns out darker than I intend. It doesn't help that the content I choose for my paintings is inherently dark. At any rate, when you're surrounded by dark images, brightness is tough to come by.

I love the colors of the sky at sunset. What better way to brighten a room than to add shades of yellow, orange, red and violet? As is usual at this point, the picture turned out darker than I intended - I need to learn more about creating water - but I'm really happy with the brightness of the sky. Once again I have fallen back on oil pastels as my medium, which resulted in a stained carpeting (time to invest in tarps!) a cracked finger (from using it to blend the colors on the canvas), and a really awesome fuzzy blended effect. I can't wait to hang this in my living room!

My house is very beige. High beige ceilings. Wide beige walls. Beige carpet. Beige sofa. I do what I can to brighten it up. Red curtains, throw pillows, and upholstery, paintings by Leonid Afremov. Still my living room has two large, beige walls that feature nothing but yards of neutral. In the last couple of months, other household items have taken priority over wall decoration. Recently I tried to figure out what I could do to make at least one of the walls a little bit more interesting.

I love the coast. I would live there if I could. I love the taste of sea air, the sound of the waves crashing, the feel of the constant breeze, the smells and colors that go along with wandering that line between land and sea. Since it's not practical for me to move to the coast, I decided what I really needed was a window overlooking the ocean. Instead of using acrylics, my usual choice when painting, I grabbed some oil pastels and four 16x20 canvases. It was a messy project but I love how fuzzy pastels are on canvas. Drawing with pastels creates more of an illusion or suggestion of shape and lines rather than precise definition of images. I sealed the canvases with acrylic seal so the chalk dust wouldn't forever color my walls and floor, and voila! My window to the ocean was made in just a few hours' time.