May you walk gently through the world

My painting's finished! It may not seem as if much changed since last week, but those last finishing touches often take as much time as making some bigger changes.

When I first started working on bringing out the images, and I found that head near the bottom which reminded me of an old Indian, all the time I was painting I had that saying in my head from Jim Morrisson : "Indian, Indian, what did you die for? Indian says, nothing at all". I'm still not sure whether it's from a song, or even whether it refers to native Americans at all, but I read it somewhere ages ago and it has always stayed with me.

We all know that all over the world terrible crimes have been committed to indigenous people by European settlers, and I'm certainly not going to launch into a political sermon here, but for some reason the native Americans have always fascinated me, because of the way they saw the world and the way their land was taken from them. I once saw a movie about the massacre at Wounded Knee, and boy did I regret that! For years to come those images haunted me and I was horrified by the senseless brutality of it all. Now I simply don't watch movies or documentaries like that anymore. I have a very visual memory, and I don't want my days and nights tantalized by the horrible things humans can do to eachother.

But anyway, since this painting was about Indians for me, I went in search of a title in old sayings and quotes from Indians, and decided to call it "May you walk gently through the world". For me this sums up the spirit of the old native Americans, their connection with the land and the animals, their goals of harmony and balance. Values that the world today is in such need of.

As always when I finish a painting, I'll show you the steps from the very beginning:

I must've had a lot of leftover pinks and reds, because that's all this first layer is. Probably put on there with a foambrush, can't remember ... (I always do several backgronds at the same time)

second layer: cool colours on top (although I seem to have been spraying some yellow too ...)

My favorite part: dripping and dribbling

I felt it was too dark and needed brightening up, so out comes the white, and some black for contrast

another favorite part of the painting process for me: layering transparant colours on top

starting to make random marks and doodles

painting around the marks, keep on turning the canvas

Finding figures in the background. I decided to keep two of the random doodles I made: the bird and the fish

Felt like they belonged there ....

starting to bring out the figures

Finding another fish, and making the Indian's head a bit smaller

Too dark, needed brightening up: dripping again, blue and orange

another tree, because the head was still too domineering

Working on the woman's face

Again brightening up by adding some dots. These are the pictures you saw last week

And this is where I stopped last week. I decided to add some more dots on the left, to bring more balance in the painting

brightening up the colours and finishing the bird inside the other bird

working on the birds, and dripping some more on the left tree, because the colour was too saturated for my liking ...

Almost there ....

the finished painting: "May you walk gently through the world"

40x40cm - 15,7x15,7"

Phew, maybe I take too many pictures, my posts seem to get longer each time I finish a painting ;-)

I'm linking this to Paint Party Friday. I hope you go and take a look there, as there are so many artists linking up every week and showing their beautiful work. 

And don't forget: there's still time to sign up for the Etsy-promotion month in May. 20 people have signed up already, and there's room for many more! Go here to read all about it! You can also sign up if you don't have a blog, but are active on Facebook or Pinterest, any social media where you can post pictures of the shops you promote. I'm not on twitter so I don't know whether you can post pics there. If it is, twitter is okay too!

And today I got a nice surprise: I was featured on a recently started blog about migraine. Here's the link. I'm so happy when people connect with my art and when my art is able to touch people emotionally.

That's it for now! Thanks so much for visiting! I'm overwhelmed by the response I got on last week's post. I really appreciate you sharing your ideas and thoughts with me! Big hugs to all, wishing you a wonderful end of the week, and a lovely weekend walking gently through the world .... ♥ ♥ ♥