koi pond

This is painted on gessoed masonite & it's been sprayed with a fixative so it can be framed without glass. I have spent a lot of time lately looking at ponds and I guess it was just a matter of time before I painted a pond. With any good pond there has to be fish so I painted a few Koi to splash around.
I’ve had lots of fun painting the Monet series lately but I have to admit it…. one of the paintings didn’t quite turn out as well as I would have wanted. Every one has a bad day at times and I’m not blaming my brother BUT… I have told him numerous times “Don’t come over while I’m painting” but some folks including my relatives think painting for me is like eating… They think it looks so easy and I paint so fast that I could do it in my sleep. The think you can still paint well while having a conversation about something as insignificant or nutty as, say.. the problems of ebay or the election or even the compost heap. You get the idea. For me this is not true.
As an intuitive painter I have to be in my own space. but not wanting to be rude… I start in with the painting trying to get back to where I was before the compost heap became so important that he walked across the street to tell me about it.
I’m standing at the easel looking down at my painting trying to figure out where I was going next thinking it is almost done and as he talked and talked and talked, I kept mixing and mixing and mixing. Now, anyone who paints knows this alone is a recipe for a major mud fest. Even I knew when I was mixing it this can’t be good, but I kept trying, I painted and mixed and painted and remixed, trying to make it work, while occasionally saying “ “right” “Yeah?” ” really “ ”Hm”. The only color I was really getting of course was gray and no real values… so after he left, I took the painting outside to dry and this little painting must have had 1/2 inch of paint on it. Three days later and I’m pretty sure it isn’t dry yet. I should have scraped it off but I didn’t have the heart.