Saturday, May 15, 2010

Begin






begin

Old English beginnan "to begin, attempt, undertake," form of onginnan perhaps, "to open, open up" (cf. O.H.G. in-ginnan "to cut open, open up," also "begin, undertake"


to proceed to perform the first or earliest part of some action; commence; start

to originate; be the originator of

to come into existence

Do you ever have trouble getting started? Beginning?


I do, sometimes. Many times, I wait until something is fully formed in my head before I start putting it together. I think I miss out, though, when I don't just go ahead and start with whatever glimmer of an idea I have and see what happens ... or even begin with no idea at all. Because, no matter how I begin, the idea - in the making of it - will almost always

transform

change in form, appearance, or structure; metamorphose

change in condition, nature, or character; to undergo a change in appearance or character;

become transformed



It's never exactly what it was in my head.


"Too often, we are so preoccupied with the destination that we forget the journey ..." ~ anonymous

"... let your mind start a journey thru a strange new world. Leave all thoughts of the world you knew before." Let your soul take you were you long to be ... Close your eyes, let your spirit start to soar, and you'll live as you've never lived before." ~ Erich Fromm

fly

flit, flutter, hover, soar

clever, alert, wide awake, first recorded 18th c, reinvented in 1990s

to rise


In making these three small paintings, I used mostly the techniques I've done here before ... some resist with pastes and glazes, a bit of silk screen, some relief and embossing, etc.

To a turquoise and lime green background, I added some titanium white stripes and magenta spots. To make the spots, I cut out a stencil of watercolor paper (I ran out of acetate, but this worked better than I expected), and did a thin wash through the holes.


This is a product I find handy. It's called EZ Screen Print. It's a light sensitive sheet coated with emulsion that can be exposed in sunlight and then used as a screen without a frame. At $10 or more a sheet, it's a lot more expensive than regular silk screening supplies, but it's convenient and works well on a smaller canvas like this. I can't ever seem to use products in the way they were intended, so your mileage may vary as they say, but I just used straight from the tube acrylic paint and pushed it through the screen with a palette knife ...


and added text with permanent ink.





See you next week!

3 comments:

Unknown said...

These pictures make a grate series. Begin... Transform... Fly!

EWian

Debra said...

I absolutely love this!

Suzanne Silk said...

Just make one mark + voila . . . one is on one's way. Thanks for sharing.
SuzanneSilk.com