“There was awe, and there was also incredulity—sheer disbelief that the dead Moon, of all worlds, could have sprung this fantastic surprise.”
Here we are at the cliff’s edge of 2019. The year 2020 sounds so ‘sci-fy-y’ to me. I half expect George Jetson and his lovely wife Jane to move in next door. I’d see them out walking Astro their dog and invite them in for a cup of Decaf Teleportation Tea. Then we’d laugh about the good old days when we had pizza delivered to the door by a teenager driving a Ford Pinto (instead of having it arrive in our Supersonic Fast Food Tubes). Kidding aside, It is amazing how far technology has come in a relatively short time; Mars, iCloud, Roomba, that snoopy chick, Alexa… Luckily, many predictions have not happened. For example, in the early 1950s, the magazine Popular Mechanics predicated we would all have a helicopter by now. So that teenager in the Ford Pinto above, might have been the kid in the beat-up Huey who just wrecked in your elm tree and dropped your pepperoni pizza on your landing pad. By the way, I checked the price for a used 2014 Huey - 26.2 million US dollars, just in case you were wondering.
So, with only a few days remaining, I felt compelled to create something surreal. My 2020: A Space Odyssey is the result of just playing with paint and finding out what would happen.
This painting is done on Fabriano 140 lbs cold pressed watercolor paper size 11’ x 14”. Prior to laying down color, I primed the paper with DecoArt Media White Gesso and a palette knife to give it some texture.
Additional structural interest was achieved by adding torn pieces of newspaper over the gessoed surface.
Colors were added and subtracted in multiple layers. My acrylic paint of choice was DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylics in Quinacridone Gold, Burnt Sienna, Prussian Blue, Quinacridone Red and Yellow Oxide and DecoArt Americana Acrylic in Black, diluted with a little water.
I cut an open circle template from paper and pounced diluted DecoArt Media White Gesso with a sponge to lighten a section of my background into an orb shape. I defined the edges with a black Stabilo pencil and feathered the edges with a water brush.
Thank you for stopping by. Have a wonderful end to your 2019!
