IF: Breezy

This is my entry for Illustration Friday the theme is "breezy." I didn't think I had an idea then I remembered the tiny daffodils in my window boxes, I'd just been telling my husband that they look like they're walking into a headwind...As I was working on this painting big gusty blustery winds started buffeting the windows, perfect music for painting a work in the theme of Breezy! Anyway, daffodils are a perfect subject for my submission to this week's Illustration Friday as it was almost exactly two years ago that I did my first Illustration Friday challenge and that one was the first daffodils of spring!

This is my painting for my homework in my Composition for Abstract Painting class. Well this one was a tough one. it was really hard for me to connect with the subject matter -- basically I felt nothing about it...so I simply jumped in and tried very hard to use the technique from the teachers demo...at a certain point I thought, "there is nothing else I can do with this and it sucks!" So I scraped off as much of the paint as I could, remixed completely new colors and started stabbing at the canvas, using the under-painting as a guide. Interestingly even though I didn't use the photo for reference in my second attempt the image still came out less abstracted than I'd intended.

Last night I was still less than thrilled with my effort, then this morning as I was cropping and sizing my photo of it I thought of the pot as a coffee pot, then I thought of the chilies and thought Mocha Mexicana with chili's and lemon -- uuuuuhhhhhmmmm!!!

combination of chocolate and chilies is an aphrodisiac you know! Now if I'd thought of that last night The painting could have gotten really interesting with all those vessels and peppers...

The little pictures below are the photos I did my paintings from. The coffee pot photo is from the Academy of Art class collection and the photo of the daffodils I took in my front yard. Its been really stormy and windy here in Northern California, perfect weather for photography!