I had a plan and didn’t follow it from the very first moment.  I had intended to just cover up part of a ho-hum layer, but in a flash, the whole thing was covered in gesso.  In fact, it seemed that every time I had a plan, I didn’t follow it!

Watch Wet paint + a Stencil + a Baby Wipe on YouTube.

Once I had gesso’d the entire panel, my fingers ended up in the paint.  When finger painting, I do 2 things. I use a barrier hand cream and I make sure my paints are non toxic.

There’s an article here explaining what symbol to look for on your paints here. Know your paints, take reasonable precautions and decide for you what you are comfortable doing.

Another plan that went awry, was the plan to just put a little pattern from the Triangular Pathways stencil on the background.  It brought me such joy to smear the baby wipe over the stencil in the wet paint, that I didn’t want to stop. So I didn’t!

When I work on top of a piece from who-knows-when that was made with who-knows-what supplies sometimes colors unexpectedly bleed through.  The hint of purple at the top inspired me to ditch the planned deep turquoise for purple.

I had fallen in love with the background, so much so that the idea of covering it up was painful. But it needed something more.  So I compromised.  I decided to put something very small on it.

In a drawer, I found an O.O.P.S., an Outstanding Opportunity Presenting Suddenly, from another project.  The colorized vintage photo (that was too small for that project) was the exact size I needed for this one.

My play usually involves some scribble journaling, but not this time.  Another case of the plan going out the window.  I found the words, Wisdom Is, on my Wall of Words stencil.

My love for the background guided my final decisions on this, to use a very small something on it and let the background shine.  Appropriately, this was not where I had planned to go!

What makes a great canvas for play? One that I don’t like anymore!  There were marks all over this, there was texture, there was pattern, there was color. But together, they just didn’t rock my world. At one time, I had liked this canvas, but not any more. This was a perfect opportunity to play!

Pouring the paint directly on the canvas was a wee bit addictive, so before I knew it, the rainbow had appeared. These jars were filled with leftovers of interior house paint, a more manageable size than working with a big gallon size can of paint.

The colors smeared around completely changing the look of the canvas from where it started today.

All the textures in it began to pop out more.  The rainbow covered up most of the patterns from before, but that opened the door for a new pattern.

Using a Gel Press plate, I printed ladders all over the canvas using my Ladder stencil/mask. The ladders represented the journey of this canvas, the climb up from layer to layer with the canvas.  That makes it sound a lot more sophisticated than the fact that it was like a rainbow game of Chutes and Ladders.

A very long game of Chutes and Ladders from the first time I touched this canvas!   At times, I felt like it was moving forward as the layers built up, getting me closer to that magical winning square.  Then at times it felt like I had been sent back to almost the beginning of the game when a layer was blah.

This canvas isn’t finished yet. The game isn’t over but I’ll have to wait until another day to see what inspiration the muse brings for the next layer.