Emerging.

In the last month, I've started collecting large brushes.

I mean 20, 30, and my favorite, a 40 round mural brush. Even on smaller pieces, these large brushes allow me to cover so much space, to make large looping brush strokes, add more texture, mix paint on the canvas.

(Not that I use canvases anymore. I now work on birch panels from Lowes or Blick panels.)

I am in love with working from general to detail. When I helped a friend by painting large 4'x2' panels for a puppet theater, I started by laying down wide swaths of color, general tones, working out the under painting. Then, I started adding details, progressively using smaller and smaller brushes. 

Here's what emerged from my brush today. It took a lot of procrastinating to get a brush in my hand...organizing paint, cleaning dried paint off my palette...but as the conversation flowed with Larissa, allowing me to work unconsciously, I finally got back to painting, the best love of life and fantastic distraction from hip pain. 

Layers to come. This is just a snapshot of progress, a peek in the middle. The girl is to be a pirate with shells in her hair. The other, who knows? Isn't that the fun part?