But I get bored. I get bored and then I hear about a thing and I immediately want to try it. I ended up buying this case of palette knives at Lee Valley on a whim several years ago and when I saw Linda Wilder's wonderful mountain landscapes I had to drag them out and try to use them. (There aren't many role models for the landscape painter in acrylics, every time I see a painting I like it's either in oils or pastels. And while I'm willing to give oils a go, I am extremely hopeless with pastels and Neil tells me that they will give me rainbowlung.)
So palette knives. It's like painting with spackle. My first attempt was a total disaster which I eventually rescued with a bristle brush. The second attempt was a half-total disaster, but people inexplicably liked it.
This is my third attempt:
This is the Japanese Garden at the Butchart Gardens in Victoria. I enjoyed the gardens there tremendously, although they were rather crowded. It wasn't until we hit the Japanese Garden and it started raining a bit that the crowds thinned out.
With this painting I think I am finally starting to get somewhere with the palette knife. I really like how it turned out. And I think I am in denial about the colours I like. Neil and I were joking about people buying paintings to match their sofa, and I remarked that the colours in this painting would make for rather hideous decor. Then I took it into my living room and it matches not only my sofa, but the walls and rug as well. It goes with them so nicely that now I am thinking of painting a three foot tall version and sticking it up on my wall. So I apparently am not only the sort of person who likes orange and green, but the sort of person who matches paintings to the sofa. Go figure.
