Woods painting

Tonight I felt the need to pull out the gouche. I used to hate gouche back when I had to do tedious flat work with it at ACAD (Alberta College of Art and Design.) But last year at Sheridan I discovered that it can be used much more freely and interestingly, and less painstakingly.

I love the textures gouche makes, the naive quality about it, the vibrant colors, and it's unforgiving nature- you just have to go for it, there's not much 'fixing' mistakes. You just gotta roll with it. I like that. So then, tonight, I got home from Reading Night* at Eliot's, I badly needed to get the paints out. I planned out an image very quickly (in a minute or so) in my sketchbook, and then just started painting, without letting myself draw anything out. I want to start working more spontaneously, to trust my whims and intuition more, to make decisions and then following them, without room for wimpy hesitation. I want to do more of my exploration of materials and subject matter while in the process of making images, not in laborious planning stages that never come to anything.

I like it, as a starting point to more paintings.

I really need to find a way to post better resolution pictures. Blogger always seems to compress things down. That painting's neat textures have been messed up and supressed. BLAH.

* About once a week, at Eliot's, a group of us get together and each bring something to read to the others (and it can be pretty much anything.) It's great, I get exposed to so many stories, books, essays, etc. that I wouldn't think to read, on my own.