Here is how I moved or messed up paintings yesterday morning.

First is the Cozen-inspired leaf painting drawn left-handed (non-dominant hand) with black and red inks and painted with transparent acrylic fluid paints over a background collage painting washed over with thinned opaque paint film to make it hazy. I like it turned clockwise but this orientation isn't bad either. I need to add some color to the hazy-blue leaf in the bottom third. I like the textural painting coming through parts of the leaves and I don't mind the hot pink 'berries' mixed with the deep red ink. Maybe near done? Not sure if I should continue along this vein since it hasn't been my style, except for the left-handed sketching which I still like.

The next series shows how I morphed the blue and green painting starting with an application of thinned titan buff layers that I sprayed with watery mists to let the dripping begin. 

Next, I turn the wood panel around because I liked the 'windows' or doors i created along one edge using my palette knife to scrap back to the wonderfully textured paint I'd covered up. I used one of my favorite tree sticks to mark lines in the wet paint to connect layers. Things are getting pretty hazy now and I am torn up about the loss of bright - but dark - colors and textures. You can see that I was also trying to find strong lines and shapes and I was very caught up with the wavy horizontal lines that were strong in the original.

So, I stopped fighting it and let go of my fear of covering 'precious' areas. I applied more thin layers of acrylic paint and things started getting sticky. I began smoothing the surface with the flat part of my knife, burnishing the top coat and discovering that the heat of the burnishing action seemed to be fusing the colors from below with the buff-green color of the top color. I felt the painting begin to take on the texture and look of an encaustic painting. So, that process drove me onward until the whole thing had been handled with burnished surfaces in horizontal bands (reminiscent of the original bands I made for the mosaic painting) and completely lost everything that was there - EXCEPT for the orange-pink rectangle that used to be on the bottom. Zoom in on this image and you will see that texture is all over this painting and I love it. Don't you love some of the subtle lines i made with my little stick? BUT, it needs contrast. OR does it need a more even color across the majority of the painting with peeks at the colors underneath through lines carved into a new top layer to suggest some shape that holds a viewer's eye and releases it back to the texture and subtle color. It is not done, this one. I may have to sit with it for awhile though.

Here are my favorite marking tools used in the painting above - and most other paintings. I use them to draw with inks, too. I placed them with familiar objects to put their size into context. You can see their tips are permanently covered with inks and acrylic sheaths. 

That's it for today. I won't have time to get into my studio to work until the weekend. Please post some of your work, Helga, so we can talk about what you are doing. -Eileen