An experiment in "happy" by Karirose

I recently joined a local artist’s group. The assignment for the meeting was to paint something that made me happy or would make others feel happy. Happy? Seriously? I haven’t painted happy in so long I don’t know that I can even paint happy. I considered skipping this my first meeting. But decided rather to attempt the task.

In the style of the Disintegration Collaboration I began by taking a piece of canvas paper that comes from a pad and poured old coffee and used coffee grounds on it, let it set a couple of days and dry. Then came the “happy” question. What do I paint to show happy?

Then it hit me, of course I was drinking coffee at the time. Something I enjoy and usually smile is taking the first sip of my steaming hot coffee. So that was my start.

I usually work with acrylics, but I have a love/hate relationship with watercolors. I would like to work with them successfully but they tend to fight me. So I wet the paper , dropped different colors of water color, let it dry. Then the idea of steaming cup of coffee.

I am a fan of Lynette Shelley so my inspiration came from her work. My work looks nothing like hers, but I appreciate her work and inspiration. So from there I began.

Once I was semi pleased with the colors on the canvas, I began drawing the lines with the liquid acrylic craft paint which is thinner and easier to work with for making lines.

What follows is the end result. Of course it wasn’t the quality level of most of the artists there who have been or once were art teachers or people who have actually sold multiple paintings so I was quite intimidated. But they were kind and encouraging.

As you have noticed, I followed my original idea of just letting the colors I applied to the wet paper just be and draw the lines over it. However you will also notice that on the sunflower on the cup, I felt the need to color within the lines lol I wanted the sunflower to pop of “happy:” and “cheery”.

Just an experiment…