"tinies"

                               8x8

We had a guest speaker in one of my classes, Amy Pollien, a painter based in Maine; her work is pretty incredible, quite detailed and precise ... Not something I could ever do, but she presented ideas and techniques that I could try. Things like using plein air paintings in a more exploratory way, as a way to find a focus, or like "the dead hand," which is a way of applying paint to the canvas or paper: just "place" it and leave it, don't move it around ...

Here I'm using her practice of making 8x8 "tinies" as a way of testing out a subject, seeing if it's something you'd pursue further.

I have a couple of small branches of dried up oak leaves that I have been wanting to paint, but they look so confusing I doubted I could do anything with them.