Painting progress

The last few months for me have been a blur. A lot of my projects have been put on the back burner. But I'm excited to be getting back to what I love. I won't go into detail right now about all that has happened in the last few months, that' s a long story. It has nothing to do with anything I blog about. I'm sure I'll share more of those personal details at some point. But right now I'm just glad that Spring seems to peering through the clouds and warmth is returning to the ground.

Today though I want to share some of the process I went through went my last painting.

My friend Lindsay, who I love and adore, is moving this week, SAD! She is a hairstylist and traded me a new hair-do for a painting. I've done this trade thing a few times now and I really like how it works out :) She told me she wanted a hummingbird, corals, peaches, and turquoise. Which is perfect because those are most of MY favorite things.  Here is the end product:

I started out putting in blocks of bright happy colors, leaving white space for the bird.

Then I added in blocks of color to the body.

Then I started to have some fun with it. I through in some drips, some scribbles, and some blocks of lighter colors.

My husband said the red drips looked like the bird was bleeding...not really my intention. I hate when he's right. I therefore tried to cover a little bit of that up.

In the end, this became one of my most favorite paintings I've ever done. It combines all of what I like to do with art. This will sound really cheezy, but I kind of found myself as I did this. I've struggled back and forth between styles and techniques. I love to try lots of new things and that kicks me sometimes because then I can't decide what to stick with. But this...this is my happy place. I'll be adding prints of this to the shop soon since the original has a home. One of my goals this year is to add in originals to my etsy shop this year. That's the plan! Stay tuned!