Circles and Dots and Dots and Circles

One afternoon several months ago I took my daily stroll out to my mailbox to check the mail. Among the usual junk and other assorted stuff I was kind of surprised to find a catalog called Touch Of Class. I have absolutely no idea how it wound up in my mail that day. I don't recall ordering it. Not my usual preference in decorating style. But I figured, what the heck!, and flipped through it as I walked back to the house.

Well, H.E.L.L.O.!

Nope, not my taste in decor, but certainly my taste in some of the artwork! I just loved some of the contemporary canvases. What really caught my eye were a few of the metal wall sculptures. I took a pair of scissors to that catalog as soon as I walked back in the house. Ideas! Ideas! Ideas! I clipped and clipped and stuck all of those little nuggets of inspiration into my art files. I keep a filing cabinet in my studio with images of other art, greeting cards, magazine clippings, etc. as inspiration and future reference materials.

One of the things I particularly liked was this ...

It's called Particles by J. Warren. This mysterious person, J. Warren, is rather elusive. I've looked online for a website but can't find any other reference than the metal work in Touch Of Class and a couple of other places. Disappointing. Would like to see more work.

Anyway, it's been in my folder for some time now, waiting on me. Today is the day! Since I'm currently only creating art for my house I don't feel bad about snitching the idea for a new piece of work. My idea is the basic circles and dots, with a twist. Of course, I'm not a metal worker, I'm a painter, so that's the first deviation. Instead of landscape, I'm going vertical. Canvas is 36" x 48". Not sure what's with all this big sized stuff lately, but I'm not going to fight it.

More 'twisting' is I've washed canvas with fat brushstrokes, blending shades of aqua with white, to create my background. What the game plan is - create the circles and dots in varying shades of purple, sienna and copper, with some small touches of moss green and maybe a bit of buttery yellow.

I also want 'sparkle', like lead crystal when it catches the light. Somewhere in all my craft and art supplies I have a package of glue-on crystals ... remember the craze of painted sweatshirts and Keds tennis shoes? I think I will use the crystals for a few of the smallest dots. Not too many or it'll get tacky and over done with bling instead of the scattered twinkle of light I'm looking for. And just for giggles, I Goggled those sweatshirts for a scary fun flashback ...

I'm still trying to figure out the best solution to making the large circles. Although a liner brush and liquidy paint gives a nice thin line I'm not so sure about making the lines completely uniform all the way around. My hand isn't that steady! I'm considering painting the edge of a large bowl, then pressing the bowl to the canvas. Vaguely like rubber stamping, I suppose. I can use varying sizes of bowls for the different sized circles. I'm going to try a test one on another canvas first. I'm pretty pleased with the background I painted a little while ago (waiting for it to dry now) and don't want to muck it up!

So, I'm off to the studio to play with more purple paint!!!

Namaste, y'all ...