Tiger Leaping

I spent the last two days in the studio painting.

The good thing about winter is that I can get a lot of work done.

In the summer, I yearn to be outdoors, gardening, cycling, swimming and all these activities cut into my studio time.

If I did not enjoy skiing so much, I would live in an eternal sunshine, dividing my time between New Zealand and Colorado which offer opposite seasons.

I love the long days of summer and the light is so wonderfully bright.

I put the finishing touches on two paintings that I was working on.

I will elaborate here about one of them and blog later about the second one.

I called the one above "Tiger Leaping" - (pretty obvious, I know but I always believed that a painting should speak for itself regardless of its name).

I painted it on a regular bed sheet.

I primed the sheet with few layers of heavy black gesso.

I left some of the beige color sheet showing at the bottom.

I stretched it on a 48" by 60" canvas stretcher bars (1.2 meters by 1.5 meters).

I did the tiger in smudge free white chalk and the rest with permanent white ink, tippex and oil sticks.

My intentions is to elaborate and expand my sketchbook series.

This is a very experimental piece.

I am not sure that I will work on bed sheet again.

It is like silk which is hard to stretch and tend to bow.