Waste Not Want Not - by North Carolina Painter Sue Scoggins

This is random and nothing like I usually do.  But, I was totally "over" painting seriously for the day.

There is this "thing" that really bugs me...that's called waste. Instead of buying new, I usually try to recycle or get more than one use out of things.  So when I really botch up a painting, while my first inclination is to throw it away, sometimes I just stick it in a closet somewhere and forget about it. This old canvas had an unusual amount of thick dried up paint on it.  I at least had to give it try....see if something could come out of it.

So I thought...let's turn negative into positive.  I took a mixture of prussian blue/dab of red/and whatever other dark I could find and sketched, in very thin paint, a line of birdies sitting on wires. .. let the shapes of color of the old painting create the shapes of the birds. Thus the odd shapes of those  little creatures.  The randoms colors in the birdies are all the colors underneath.  Such diversity, ha.

Then, I began to negative paint a neutral color around, filling in the background.  The bottom of the painting was already dark..so I just put in a few strokes to indicate buildings.

There ya have it.  Urban birdies.  (Still might head for the trash bin.)  But...it was a fun experiment.