Palette Cleansers in an arty way...

I have become a bit obsessed with the idea of palette cleansers at the moment.

I am not talking about the spoonful of some complex foam creation between the courses of a Dégustaion (thank you Masterchef for teaching me about seven course meals!) but I do mean something that is very similar.

A palette cleanser in my sense could be a bit of fluff book that I will read after I have read a really amazing book or series that sucked me into that world.

It may be watching Modern Family after binge watching four seasons of the Walking Dead.

It could be a yoga session after a period of intense crossfit workouts – lets be honest – that will probably be something I will never experience! Or going for a gentle walk after treadmill training.

And I absolutely need palette cleansers after a large or intense painting – especially if said painting decides it is going to be difficult and doesn’t quite work properly. (a la most of the Harry Potter paintings!)

Generally a artistic palette cleansers are little drawings in my sketchbook, or playing with some digital art, or even something like zentangles but this my palette cleansers became a surprise series of paintings all on their own.

I am currently working on the second of the Angels and Empress paintings, (You can see the Morrigan here), and the moon empress (Selene) has been a dream to paint, until I had to start her hair and this is where I have come unstuck.

You see in my head I have a very definite colour for her hair, however I am unsure it will work with how the painting has taken shape. And I also know I need to dedicate a fairly long painting session to do her hair (I know from experience that doing hair in two sessions doesn’t work or flow properly)

And unfortunately for Selene last week I was also feeling a little raw, a little depleted and a little fragile, so I knew that it was NOT the right time to dig into what could potentially be a difficult part of the painting. So I took her off my work desk.

Knowing I was a little raw, a little depleted and a little fragile I also knew that I needed to paint something for my self-care, so I trawled through my current sketchbook looking for little sketches to become little palette cleanser paintings!

These little vignette’s from my sketch book really catalogue little snippets in my everyday life, what I was looking at that day (how to grow Echinacea’s for example), how I was feeling (the teary eye) or what I was currently obsessed with (the skull in the terrarium)

And as I start to dive into them and adding paint and letting my mind wander and gently clear, I realise that the colour I had in mind for Selene’s hair was the right one, and once I finish these, I will be ready to finish her off.