Where Did I Wander.....

A New Look

It has been a while since I added anything to this, my Forgotten Blog! I had thought I would be right back with an update on the Garden in all its Glory! Alas, good intentions and several Years have flown past... but I am still here! And I thought I would like to record the transformation of the last room in my house that had not been painted since I moved in almost nine years ago! It is the bedroom my son sleeps in and it was papered in an unbelievably dark old brown wall paper....

This is one of the only pictures I could find of the old look... 

because who wants to take pictures of a dark old wall paper?

We stripped the walls one wall at a time and patched the old plaster 

and began to paint. The winter had us dreaming of misty green jungles.....

The walls were old and full of holes and cracks...

We repaired the plaster, but had to paint around it 

while waiting for the plaster to cure....

The idea was to graduate the shades of green,,,, light to dark...

One wall at a time.... over many many weekends....

Slowly transforming the room from dark to light....

Grounding the floor, but opening up to the "sky" above.....

And when we had completed the basic colors on all the walls...

Then it was time to start to paint the jungle...

Trees emerging from the mist.....

Layer by layer..... tree by tree.....

Wall by wall.....

Expanding the horizons of this small room....

Adding leaves to the branches....

Pushing back the slant of the ceiling....

Layer by layer, growing the misty glade....

Thickening the foliage.....

Slowly bringing the "jungle" to life.

Until suddenly the early Spring caught up to us, 

 and suddenly the painting could wait...

I think we will want to add many more details... 

but sometimes this takes me a long time!

But for now, the room has been utterly transformed...

You would never know it had once been so dark and dreary!

It seems I wandered Far Far away....

I hope you do not mind coming along!

A Twilight Ride

Painting Dream Horses....

My Most Recent Wall paintings, Dear Readers, have surprised even Me! The idea has been brewing in my mind for a long time.... wanting to paint horses in as close to Real Scale as could be managed. But I live in a very small house... and there are only a couple of walls even close to big enough to hold an entire horse! But about a year ago I embarked on the painting of my Small Upstairs Studio, a room about ten feet by twelve feet with a slanting ceiling.... and that only eight feet high. A Small Room. But I spend a lot of time in this room... and wanted to expand it's horizons visually and psychically... so I began by painting the ceiling to resemble sky and clouds in a very Pseudo-baroque manner.....

You can sort of see the effect in this picture..... ignore the Victorian ceiling fixture..... the walls are lavender and the ceiling I painted light blue.... and the "clouds" run around the top of the walls to link the two surfaces, and to try to create the illusion of sky overhead.....

It is quite difficult to photograph in it's entirety.... 

and I added more detail and depth of shadowing later.....

Here you can see the corner with the slanted roof under the eaves....

But I didn't take any more pictures of it because it wasn't finished. 

And then Hurricane Irene came calling.... causing much damage in the area....

(although thankfully, no damage to my property)

and somehow I didn't continue with the painting in this room.

But the project continued to whisper to me all winter..... 

I kept seeing a Horse on the larger of the walls....!

So This Summer, when I was moved to Finish the one wall in this room that still had broken lath and plaster from where a closet had been torn out by previous owners.... 

requiring the upheaval and removal of half the furnishings of the room.....

The urge to paint the newly finished wall became irresistible...

This was the corner with the torn wall newly patched and trimmed.....

And this is the Irresistible Blank Slate......

With the Dream Horse Emerging..... 

of course.... it had to acquire Wings..... being in the clouds....

This is the basic latex house paint undercoats.....

And the details gradually added....

With artists acrylic paint and a much smaller brush!

And a closer view.......

But This wasn't the Horse I had been dreaming of.....

This was the Smaller wall.... the wall I had never intended to paint at all....

And the Other wall still cried out for the Horse I was dreaming of.....

So I moved the Remaining furniture out of the way.....

And started painting the other wall.....

Much harder to photograph as it is difficult to stand in the right spot with the furniture in the way....

And with so much More Horse..... More details to paint.....

And Closer.....

And More....

It took me several Days to be willing to move the Furniture back into place....

for after all it is a Room and the furniture has nowhere else to go.....

and I use it all the time....

He is only Partly obscured.....

And She is ignoring the furniture.....

And in a funny way, I do think they make the walls recede.....

And in spite of adding two large Horses.... the room feels bigger....

And at Twilight.... 

they are just plain Magic!

My Dream Horses......!