April 3rd - "Tre Aprilante"

                                                

               

my beautiful flame red amaryllis

 
Today is the 3rd of April, a very important day in Italy (and for me), "Il Tre (3) Aprilante (April) Quaranta (40 days) Durante (long)" which means: whatever the weather is like on the third of April that's what will prevail for the next 40 days!!! The Italian version of Groundhog's Day I guess.
Whew!!! It's OK. That is, if it doesn't rain this evening we've left Winter behind us and Spring is on the way because we have had a lovely...sunny... day. (I couldn't bear even one more day of rain.) Even my prized Amaryllis decided to open up into full bloom today.

And, I have been working.  The photo on the left is the next state of the large work on canvas that was my first step  using cold wax. But, mounted as a normal canvas on wooden stretchers, I don't have a hard surface behind the wax/color to allow me to scrape and dig down to previous layers. Have to find a solution.

(See Post "Cold Wax")

These are three of the small (9x9") canvas swatches at stage 2

I'm not sure yet what I'm doing, just "feeling" my way with this new medium.  I love the transparency that it gives to color.  I'm learning about the accidental mixtures that happen along the way. I'm having fun just mixing and applying color.  It's opening a whole new way of approaching my work.