Almost ready to start

I haven't been able to write anything lately, partly because I had a 14 hour drive back home and had a guest for the past few days.  Also, I have been distracted with work and getting ready for the start of the semester.  I also have been doing some research on acrylic and canvas painting including looking at other blogs and advice they had to offer.

One thing I found out from research is that acrylic paints dry really fast.  This kind of worries me, especially if I will be mixing.  If the new color dries on the palate before I am finished with it, I might find it hard to create the same color again.  That also is delaying my start as I have no idea what I want to try to paint.  I need something simple as I know it won't be good.

I've also read about different techniques such as where to start and what to paint last.  The idea that will probably work for me is painting darker hues first and finishing with the lighter colors.  I have a lot of sketch paper that I have been using for other artwork (mainly elementary things such as geometric designs colored by colored pencils.  HEY!  Maybe my first painting should be a geometric design.  It's hard to screw that up as what I typical draw is a repeated pattern of triangles with a odd color pattern (nerd alert: there was a mathematical equation used to figure out an appropriate pattern).

Okay great.  I have my first painting idea.  I won't start doing more difficult ideas (I want to paint both my cats at some point) until much later.  I think I mentioned that I have a cat at the beginning of this blog.  Last week, I adopted another one who I've fostered before traveling last month.  Their color contrast is awesome, one's black and the other is a light colored calico, which I think will make for a very interesting painting.

My last reserve is that my mother is sending me a "tool" she uses to clean her brushes that may help me knowing that the paint dries so darn fast.  I just spoke with her and she is mailing it out tomorrow, granted she remembers to actually do so.  I think until I get that, I'm going to make use of the pile of sketch paper I have. If I create something good, I'll be sure to post a picture of it on here.