WIP - Call for Art, *Bridges* theme

A local call for art and the urging of my drawing teacher prompted this work in progress. It's my quirky interpretation of a *bridge*, I came up with other ideas too but decided on this one. Hopefully I can meet the deadline, although I'm late starting it. I am going to finish this even if I miss out on entering it. I find lately I've been leaving a lot of work unfinished - does everyone do that as a beginner?? I've got lots of great ideas that I want to see come to life but my technical & application skills are lacking so I'm hoping with lots of work and patience (who said that?!) that I can get past this phase and just get some *good* art done! My teacher actually told me that it's standard to just draw for at least one year, sometimes 2 years depending on your schooling and/or field experience before getting into paints so......here we go =)

This is a life painting, no photographs used and also a totally new medium for me - acrylic paint. I'm using fluid acrylics as I don't like the way tube ones dry out so quickly plus I love the looseness of this paint and the extended drying time for blending. I'm not sure how to display this just yet ie. mount onto matboard, type of frame/ no frame etc. Any suggestions or tips are welcome!

acrylic on heavyweight Daler-Rowney canvas paper

Step 2 - Added details and shading to the bananas, started on the vintage sundae glasses. The distortions of the bananas inside the glasses were very cool and caught my eye enough initially to give this a go. Will continue on to finish the glasses and add the draping background....















Step 1 - After transferring my pencil sketch, I laid in the base colors and started on the bananas as I read somewhere that you should always do your perishables in a still life first - makes sense to me as the bananas ripened very quickly, overnight it seemed =)

Artwords Topic #44 - "Paper"

"Paper Dreams", journal, mixed media collage 12x12

An idea that I hastily jotted down earlier this week when I seen the topic for this week paper, came to life this morning in my journal. It's been a while since I felt like *playing* in it and it was so fun & quick to do, everything flowed intuitively which doesn't happen all the time for me. What made me think of a paper plane? I have no idea - but I do know that they're fun, whimsical, easy to make and who doesn't want to fly one now & then? =)

Also, I've been thinking a lot about dreams lately, how things manifest themselves in our lives and how powerful our thoughts and words are. At the beginning of this year when I started on my artistic journey, I came across this quote and it resonated with me very much - I thought of it as I finished this piece:

"Imagination is stronger than knowledge. Myth is more potent than history. Dreams are more powerful than fact. Hope always triumphs over experience. Love is stronger than death. It’s been said that each of us can influence up to 250 people in our lifetimes. How will you be influential? Be bold, and mighty unseen forces will come to your aid.” -- Robert Fulgham