Sparklers? In this season?

Don't mind if I do. I'll give you three guesses as to how I did this.

Red Lotus

 This is one of my favorite turnouts from the series of milk experiments I have been doing with my paintings. The centers of the flowers were done first with milk then painted over with red after they dried. I think they turned out some kind of wonderful.

The mums are done for

I managed to finish painting this before all the season's mums died off. How strange! 

Well, The effect of the milk on the painting it pretty subtle, but at least there's proof of concept for ya. 

See you next week!

Burnt out enso

One thing I think milk is going to be very cool for is calligraphy as with this enso, a zen symbol that sort of encapsulates the idea, 'form is emptiness; emptiness is form.'

No crying over spilled milk!

Now you never have to cry over spilled milk again - just turn it into art! 

I have begun experimenting with milk. It works a little bit like invisible ink. Paint it onto paper and when you paint over it - voila! All sorts of interesting shapes start to show up. 

I've already totally ruined about half of my test subjects. It's clearly going to take a bit of work to figure out how to use effectively (look forward to some more interesting experiments in the coming weeks,) but it certainly seems like it could have an interesting batik effect if used properly.

The piece above only has a background wash at present, but you can start to see some interesting things happening back there. On the right there are some more random practice brush strokes. High contrast definitely looks good with this stuff.

Female Whooping Crane

Continuing with the cranes, I have been working on this new pose. I think this is a female whooping crane, but I can't really get a look under the hood, so we'll just have to leave it at that. 

I can't really describe in words the sort of feelings it evokes in me. There is just this sort of calm and rounded sense of presence that words don't really do to describe. You might even say it was like calm abiding.

I haven't decided for sure if I will add some red to the composition. There's a computer generated preview of what it will approximately look like. I'd love to here your thoughts on the matter.

I am also trying to work larger. This one will be nearly 3 ft tall when complete.

Rocky Mountains foothills

If I recall correctly, this was done looking at a picture of the Rockies somewhere in Colorado.