New toys

I love the art shop! It's an Aladdin's cave of fantastic and inspiring tools. Just standing in front of the various paint charts, the tubes all chromatically lined up, the colour swatches hanging off to the side, the names(Cerulean blu, French Ultramarine, Pthalo, Prussian, Cobalt.....rrrrrRRRRRRrrrr!sexy!) makes me hum with delight.There are brushes and mediums, papers, canvases, boards, pastels. conte, pencil, dipper, palettes, easels, books, nibs,pens..........the list is endless.
Want to make me happy? Let me shop in the Art shop!

So, in need of a little retail therapy and aware that shoplifting is illegal, I went and bought myself some rubber paint-shapers. I limited myself to a pack of three wedges, but the other available shapes are groovy and I intend to revisit that corner and find out what the other interesting shapes do and how I can convince my wallet to disgorge some money to fund the newest acquisition.

Now, the reason I wanted the shapers is to loosen my style of painting a bit and add some different marks to the paint surface. As much as I love loose painting, I sometimes find myself standing an inch from the canvas, nose almost touching, with the paintbrush gripped vice like in my claw,just short of it's ferrule. Not loose at all. If loose is an orang-utan, then I am a tortoise. So, I have to have some props to remind me to loosen up. I can't paint drunk( tried ,and it did not work) , so this is part of my arsenal to help me. Funnily enough, I have enjoyed painting en plein air because the need for speed makes me loosen up a lot. No dawdling in the rain/wind/sun/heat (please add whatever weather conditions are unpleasant in here..............) and I am not overly keen on being without a cup of tea for more than an hour or two at any time.

So, these are the paintings done with the aid of the paint-shapers, but using brushes too. Let me know what you think.

15 x 21 cm
oil on paper

21 x 30
oil on paper