Reading, Riding, Drinking: Paint Night Date Night

As many of you know, quite a few weeks ago I joined the ranks of people who spend a large portion of their days in an office. As offices go, mine is pretty nice. I have a nice chair, some shelves, and plenty of cabinets for food, tea and coffee fixings, and I guess some files, too. The only thing my office lacks that I can't really do anything about is a window. But windows come with time, and I can easily get up out of my chair and walk to all the windows I could want. And I enjoy the excuse to stretch my legs frequently.

But still, the office is pretty drab. Beige-ish walls, light wood shelves and cabinets, and a light gray speckled desk top. I knew I needed some art, but then I remembered that I'm picky and poor. So I thought that maybe I would just get some blank canvases and paint them three different colors. I consulted my favorite artist, and she thought it was a fabulous idea. And it was a good thing she did, too, because while I am pretty good at coming up with ideas like this, I am not too excited to commit ideas to paper. It seems so permanent. And my lack of art skills was not helping me get started.

Thankfully, mixing paints and putting a solid color on canvas can be very forgiving and easily changed. So after a cool crisp pale ale, Robin and I went into the basement studio and got started.

I had a vague idea of what kind of colors I wanted, but I really only felt strongly about two of them. So we got started on a sage-like green and decided to see where that took us. For each canvas we (mostly Robin) would mix the color, apply one layer evenly over the canvas, and then mix a very similar color and add a second layer on top with varying brush strokes to create the texture.

After the green we moved on to a blue that was, and still is, my favorite.

For the third canvas I really didn't know what color to do. I originally thought something in a burgundy, and Robin was feeling deep brown. But as we looked at our first two colors we realized we wanted something more bold. So we leaned towards orange.