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I am not one to force anything when I am making art. Not very often, anyway. It's not that I am trying to follow any new age idea about how art should, or should not, be created. I just tend to try this and that, as if I am perpetually goofing off. I have never been very disciplined about a lot of things. Of course, I am when it's necessary, like with flying and driving. And when it's something I badly want. I did manage to get a degree in biology and a pilot's license. But, as you may have surmised after reading my post entitled, 'Art is Personal', I do not always follow the program. Especially when it comes to being creative. I don't think I would be very good with group art challenges. I might be, sometimes, but it is not how I prefer to create.

Here, I will give you an idea of how the process goes for me when making my mountainscapes.

Right now, I have several artworks I am working on. I guess that's usually the case. When I am stumped on one piece, I start a new one or go back to one I had sitting around already. And when something isn't looking quite right, I either end up changing out many (or all!) of the layers, or I toss them in the scrap heap. Here's a sort of timeline of a work in progress:

Above is only a small number of the many changes I made to this piece. I really loved my second choice of sky and got a little hung up on that - just the sky piece. In the end, all the other layers ended up back in my scrap heap. A week or so later, I rediscovered a piece of fabric that, for a long time (many years, in fact), I had been very intrigued with but had never found quite the right place for it. Next to that lovely sky, it was perfect:

That's only two layers of fabric. The sky is one piece of fabric and all the rest is also a single piece. Sometimes I use many layers; sometimes I use just a few. The way I paint fabric is tremendous fun. This look of trees and meadows was not planned and completely took me by surprise, as does most of my painting. The colors bleed and blend unpredictably every time I paint. As I have said before, I rarely paint with any particular plan in mind.

Here's a glimpse of my messy studio, and a silly selfie:

I hope someday to make one of those fast forward videos that many artists these days are showing on their websites, etc. That might be interesting, perhaps revealing, even to me.

To read more about my art process, please click here.

To view more of my artwork, please click here.