In the night garden is my current abstract oil painting that will hopefully make its way to the Navy sloth gallery soon. I just need a few more hours to build it up. I don’t tend to blog about work in progress too much but on this occasion feel I must. You see I actually started painting it well over a year ago but had to take a step back from painting to focus on the arrival of baby sloth number 2! The combination of oils and turps was just going to be too overpowering for my oversensitive nose and I didn’t want to breathe in too much of my beloved aroma. We’d waited too long for this precious baby, I wasn’t taking a single chance. So my exciting new painting was put to dry and has remained on the easel ever since, patiently waiting for my return.

Exciting new painting?

Actually yes! I love my drip painting style, it makes me so happy just getting messy and having fun with the process. I was keen to see if I could take it to another direction and create an abstract drip floral painting. Almost a combination of drip paintings with movement paintings such as wild thing and chasing squirrels or time is my greatest fear.

In the night garden – The process so far:

• First of all I’m loving the sludgy tones to my canvas! Totally different to my usual vibrant shades.
• I found that combining movement painting (where I tilt the canvas and let the paint free fall) with a rougher approach and dragging the old credit cards through the lines to create additional movement really works well.
• I forgot how much fun creating a sprinkle effect can be (where you flick your nail through the paintbrush allowing the paint particles to sprinkle over the work)
• Of course there’s also the drip painting technique where I allow individual droplets to crash land onto the canvas. I particularly love it when different colours land on each other giving a ripple effect.

Above are a few images so far, as you can see it’s taking shape slowly, I just need to bring in more drips and movement. Now if only I could find those few spare hours!