First Day of Painting

(Well actually I did a little last night.)

I did two things last night. One was a quick pastel painting using some of the colours I had left from last fall.
Nice but I really want to get away from PASTEL, if I can with the translucent paints.
My husband is really lobbying for me to shift into dyes. He already bought all the materials a while ago and I baulked at all the fuss.
But I think it is on the books this summer.


One thing I DID want to try, so I set this up last night, was RUST dying. I rue the fact I purged the garage last summer of most of the rusty stuff, but I did find a jar of brads.
Water and vinegar and leave them over night. I can see this as a really interesting addition to brown batiks or so-so materials.

Voila
And with the addition of 3 shades of yellow/green paint, a rather interesting first piece.

I'm already seeing bear or deer.

I had saved the paper pieces from the fusible web maple leaves I used in one of the Bear Pieces to see if they would make suitable negative stencils. They worked well but I learned, the plastic side MUST go down.

 I tried a little sun printing as well.

Last night's effort was too pale, so it was heavily over painted with red, salted, then dilute black and crumpled.
All in all, a busy day. I don't usually work in reds.
Not sure what my aim is for these pieces. I'm still working on technique and colour mixing.