Paint Party Friday -- I'm back!

It's been a while since I've done any painting.  I've been busy and not feeling very well.  Yesterday after we finished planting the rest of the trees I thought I'd do a little painting.  I did a couple sketches, but was too tired to do more than that.  Today, though, I woke up for the first time in days without a pounding headache (just a slight one).  And I sat down to paint.  What a feeling of relief.  And joy.  And yes, yes, yes.  It was amazing, really.

First I worked on a journal page.  Again, I'm enjoying playing with text.

I do need more practice, though.  Instead of feeling frustrated or discouraged, I'm happy imagining page after page of text I'm going to paint.

This page is in progress.  There's some smaller text that's just still pencil right now, but will be painted.  I've only gotten to the leaves and part of the flower on my fuchsia branch and I plan on painting a few more things around the word "May" that I haven't sketched yet.  I'm still enjoying my paint dots.  (I loved Marlene's comment likening them to fabric selvage color dots!).

The other painting I started was of my new fuchsia plant. 

I experimented with a new (for me) technique to do the leaf veins.  I used a toothpick on some leaves and a straight pin on others to scratch the veins into the paper.  I'd first read about this technique on Vivian Swift's blog (before I started painting) and then I came across it mentioned somewhere else.  Wow!  I loved how it worked.  I'm so excited to try it out with other paintings.  Again, I was having lots of fantasies of all the paintings I'll be experimenting with.

Blogger (as many of you probably already know) wasn't working for a while (I even lost a post and its comments!), so I don't know how much partying will be going on today.  Even so, I'm glad to have had my own little painting party.  There are my unfinished acrylic paintings calling to me, so maybe I'll work on those a bit later today.  And soon I promise to show you more progress on the farm.