over and over and over-like a monkey with a minature cymbal....

I might have put an earlier pic of one of these stencils on here but heres my two new ones basically finished... I'm on holidays at the moment, so i should have the chance to do lots of new paintings as well as get ready for the next semester...

one door closes, another opens...

So since I last posted I have finished the big picture- of course the reason why I havent put anything on here was due to the fact that I have been in the studio til 9 most nights...and when I wasn't in the studio, I was at home doing an art history tutorial or a collaborations report...all manner of distractions to the really important stuff- ie the big picture. So i finally put the finishing touches on this one, it was good putting the last bits of crimson on and seeing that it was finished...I realized that i had balanced the picture, which is such a fine line with an abstract picture...when you look at it now, it looks, i guess, weightless in a way...it seems to just hang in the air- suspended... I think this one came up nice-I had been champing at the bit to have a crack at doing abstraction on a larger scale and I loved the opportunity to work on a surface that allowed me to paint as I wanted to...gave me the space i needed...i presented my work and that all seemed to go well, especially having a teacher who taught me painting in first year giving me positive feedback... The following three were test peices for techniques and stuff that i then tried out on the big picture...however i wanted each one to be a piece in its own right...overall I think i managed that- These paintings were quite diverse in many areas- with two of them I wanted to pare the colour down- apart from a small amount of ochre yellow on one of them the only colours i used were Payne's grey, Unbleached titanium and white. I wanted to get away from all the colour on the big picture to just see how things looked...both of these feature ideas of geometry, but i like to describe it as wonky geometry-so it kind of looks straight but then you realize none of the lines are... Then theres the Red painting, which started out life as fairly ordinary blue and white abstract was never the same after the lecturer suggested that i should cover it with red paint, and i did and the painting was transformed...That alizarin crimson paint is so great for doing these glazes and especially when it was combined with the french ultra marine blue and the pthalo blue, it almost went black... Once again, big ups to all you cats who helped me with this painting- especially those endurance atheletes who went the distance to 9pm time and time again, you guys know who you are...