Halloween and Canvas, A Winning Combination!

Happy Halloween!
I hope you are all having fun and spooky days. I am super excited, because I've just about run out of things to paint on, and my big shipment of canvases from DickBlick.com just arrived last night - whoo-hoo! The bad news is, I can feel a cold coming on... I hope I can fight it off and paint through it all instead, but we'll see. I ordered some new types of painting surfaces that I haven't tried before, so I'll let you know how it all works out. I got some oval shaped canvases, some gessoboard, a convex canvas, and some more traditional stuff. Unwrapping everything last night was just like Christmas!

I also got some frisket masking fluid (art gum), which I've never tried before andam very excited to experiment with. I also finally found a crackle medium that works for me: Jo Sonja's Crackle Medium. I never liked the results I've gotten with other stuff, but I love how this stuff looks, so I got a huge bottle of it since I just ran out. It's a one step crackle: you just put it on, wait for it to dry, and then you rub paint or stain into the cracks in order to accentuate them. I love this stuff! I should do an infomercial...

This is a close-up of a new painting I did. I used crackle medium on her face:

Here's the rest of the painting (and its twin!), with the Ruby Roo showing off her cute in the background:

I'm so glad a couple of people commented on the sound from the painting video! I had intended on replacing the sound with some music, but when I heard how it sounded sped up, it made me laugh, so I kept it like that. I don't remember what I was listening to when I painted, though! I had my iPod on shuffle, so it was going through my whole music collection and even threw in a few chapters of audiobooks (when it sounds like sped-up talking without music). I should pay better attention next time and write down what the songs are, because I'm curious myself, now that you mention it!

I hoped to do a video today, but it might have to wait until Monday since I'm feeling under the weather. I hope I don't really get sick...I have to teach tomorrow, and there's an art festival I was hoping to go to in a nearby town, too! I'll keep you posted.