Well done Sue (again)...can't wait to see pastels! I'm running out of compliments, and now I find myself thinking - hmmm do I like this one or maybe that one. I'm still thinking about the boats that you did last week - it's hard to find a favorite. Elaine

Another beautiful picture Sue. I look forward to see what you do each week! And you never disappointment me! Judy

Thank you, Anj. I was born that way. I took a watercolor class once, because I had never tried that medium before and was confused about technical stuff like papers and soaking and stretching, etc. Since you like Into The Woods, I'll tell you how I made it. I saw this technique in an art book once and just had to try it. The method involves something called 'masking fluid" also known as "liquid frisket". It's a liquid that dries all rubbery and masks sections of a picture so that they'll remain white when you brush on a color. When the top coat is dry, you can rub off the frisket with a pink eraser. Voila! white highlights, stars, whatever. With this painting, I drew on the trees, rocks and the figure. I then covered the figure with masking fluid, working within the outline. I decided which trees and rocks were going to be the lightest in color and painted them the way I wanted them to look. When the paint was dry, I covered the painted rocks and trees with the fluid and let that dry. I selected my next color. Using this technique, you work from lightest color to darkest with each layer. I took a biggish brush and did a wash of color over the complete painting.I worked quickly on the trees that I wanted to keep this color. By removing bits of wet paint with a tissue, and adding a little more of the color on other parts of the trunks I was able to create light and shadow. When the paint was dry, I covered the trees I had just done with the masking fluid. I just kept doing this, layer after layer of color, masking off areas of trees, ground, and rocks. In the end you get this big black blob of water color paper and it looks absolutely horrible. You take out your pink eraser and carefully start using it to rub off that rubbery masking fluid. In the end, surprise, you have a picture! It was fun to do, and if you ever want to try it, you might like to do an abstract to start off. That way you don't have to worry about anything, just let yourself go with the flow. If you like the picture when you're done, you can frame it and hang it in the living room. If you don't care for the way it turned out, tear it up and try another one. The artist who illustrated how to do this in his book loved the fact that he never knew what he was going to get, a keeper or a tosser.

Ha, I have been accused many times as seeing things only in black or white, no middle ground! I know what you mean. When I was taking art classes, I would do my best to make the picture very realistic, but tried to get away from that as I really like abstract art. There were a couple of classes I took where we used black chalk (messy, but I loved the way you can use it). This one male instructor did a set up of rocks and about 2-3" plastic pigs on a white board. It was amazing to capture that setup with the light coming from one direction and the shadows casted by the rocks and pigs -- very abstract! Think my funniest experience was when we had a live male model. It was so funny how each student drew that model using black chalk, e.g., there was this guy who drew the model from the front and I told him his looked like a fetus! It really did, and we were using something like 24x36" paper, and this guy only drew towards one corner about a 4" very dark, full frontal picture! Another student drew the head and chest and spent all her time making individual chest hairs! This female instructor was very blunt and called those that didn't use the entire piece of paper or were too shy and only drew the top half of the male. We also had a couple of female live models. I don't have any paintings to show because eventually I got rid of them all or tried painting over the canvas and screwed them up. I've also done quick background (stage) pictures for our vacation bible school, which range anywhere from 6'x30' and 15'x10' -- if I find pictures, I'll scan and post. Have done pictures on bedroom walls when my grandkids were small, and also would do something according to a theme my DD would do for my grandkids birthday parties, e.g., this one Batman for my grandson's b.d. with a cut out face. Each kid got their picture taken and their name printed on the photo as a souvenir to take home. It's simple, but the kids were impressed and that's what counts!