I had a blast with this piece … playing with acrylics … mixing, spreading, spraying, spritzing, brushing, stenciling all in one piece. Mati used gold leaf for her boat but since this is a practice piece I used a piece of gold Mylar from a package of tea bags instead. I glued it onto a pattern of the ship and then glued that onto the piece to give it a bit of solidity. One word of warning … don’t use a heat gun near it … it will shrink.

Faces …. I need a whole lot of practice with faces … I have been sketching them since my teens but painting with acrylics is a very different technique. But I love my background using Violette’s cloud technique. I tore my arcs out of a piece of scrap watercolour paper rather than cutting them to give them a fuzzier outline.

After finishing this piece this morning I had an epiphany … I am still stuck in the era I stopped painting. I switched to quilting art quilts, mainly landscape which kept up my sketching and drawing skills along with creating my own cross stitch and embroidery patterns. I then moved on to mixed media and digital and designing scrap book kits. I created many a background but have not done any serious painting in a long long time … thus the reason I am stuck. I want to redo many of these pieces and will do, but only after I have enough lessons done to feel mature in that area. It really is a shock to me to find my brain/hand co-ordination is not up to what my mind sees…. humbling is the word. I also feel a need to be wilder and more adventurous. Here is my dream catcher. I love the lace and the feathers and bird in the middle but my background and feathers need to be bolder and wild. I wasn’t going to post this piece and then thought … “It is part of my journey” …so it is here although it feels unfinished.