experimentation by accident

I've been working on two new paintings this week, like getting really in the ZONE. You know that place you fall into when you are really psyched about the piece you are working on and everything else in the world just fades around you into the background. Phone ringing - dont hear it, toddler unraveling everything in my yarn box - dont even notice, dog scratching to get out for a potty break - like its not even there, everything gets dulled in contrast to the excitement and passion I am experiencing about what is forming under my paint brush.

It was while in this altered state of consciousness that I started getting really freaking frustrated with the mix of pink and white I had just made and was trying to apply to the ears of my forming bunny girl. What the heck had happened to the white paint? It was runny and acting almost like a terrible version of gel medium with the pink,  it was not combining well and they were separating from each other as I mixed them, then when applied was making this awful translucent gray on the page and not pinky-white like I wanted. I tried to remember how old the paint was and maybe it had just gone bad or something, but it was only a few months old - I have some paint that is years old and still perfectly fine for using.

I kept mixing more white and more pink trying to get the paint to blend well and get more of a pink hue to it, but it just got worse and weirder as I fiddled with it. At this point I was so freaking annoyed with the color that I decided to just start over with a different white. As I reached up to grab another tube of white paint I noticed something in front of me.

I just sat there in silence for a full minute processing what I saw.   I picked up the canvas and smelled the area I was just painting and confirmed what I already knew I had done. Yes, you guessed it, I definitely just spent 20 minutes trying to get sunscreen to apply correctly to my painting. I couldnt believe it!  I was so focused on my painting that I never noticed that I grabbed the sunscreen bottle instead of acrylic paint.  I started to laugh at myself and giggled for several minutes realizing that I had been working away for several hours nonstop and it was definitely time to walk away for day and take a break....after I wiped the sunscreen off the painting first ;).