Going where I have not gone before

I am used to working small, smaller, and smaller. I bought a larger piece of canvas awhile back when it was on sale at Dick Blick. I am always challenging myself. Well, I bought it and put together the stand that had been sitting underneath one of my art tables since I can't remember when. It has been sitting in my loft annoying my dh for awhile. I would walk around it and add dabs of paint here and there whenever I was doing something else. Nothing really spoke to me.

One day I felt ambitious and I did the background. I just chose whatever color appealed to me then. I put in some bold colors hoping that some of it would show through. When I work, a lot of my background is gone - covered by something else. My work rarely ends up anywhere near what it looks like when I start. I figured why waste the good Golden paints.

I left that to dry. I then took some printed paper and cut it into some different squares and rectangles. I rooted around for some lace paper and other white textures. I

ended up using some lace paper, tissue paper, and some other thin handmade paper. I put the printed paper shapes on top in a randome fashion. I did not want to cover the whole thing up.

I let that stand around my loft for awhile, too. I caught pneumonia and related maladies a few weeks back. I was hard hit for a couple of weeks. I am still recovering from that and bronchitis symptoms. I am starting to feel better now except my back is killing me. One of my kids left a shirt on the stairs. I did not see it since I had a load of laundry in my hands. You can guess the rest.

I have been getting back into things slowly. I gave it a yellow oxide rinse and added some clear granular goop from Golden. I just applied it to misc places. After I gave that some time to dry, I started layering paints. Did you know that if you add dioxazine purple to your work that is gets this great darker color but will not look purple if you blend it in well? I just used my fingers and blended the purple in until I got the darker color but not the purpley-ness. You can see where I started doing the bottom of the piece in purple in the 3rd pict.