Beautiful Oops

Stripes over the Serengeti

acrylic paint, india ink, felt pen

9"x13"

This project was really fun to paint and it felt good to be back using the acrylics. My family went away when I painted this project so I had to pack all of my acrylic paints, brushes, palettes and my moms hair dryer. (I'm impatient when painting backgrounds and use a hairdryer to speed that process up). I really struggled on deciding what I was going to make with my splotch, and I drew up many different ideas and decided to finally just put brush to paper and see where it went. Well it turned into a zebra growing out of a pot, and honestly I'm pretty pleased with it, especially the gradient background. I just started painting stripes and realized I should make a zebra but I didn't want to paint a zebra body. So basically I just started painting.

I would say I moderately like this piece but am proud with how it turned out. My favorite part of it is the acacia trees. The trees add the Serengeti feel that I was working for and make the zebra more at home in the painting. I wish I had made the ink splotches more noticeable because even I lost where they are.

This is the classic beautiful oops project, where Medsker gives us a paper with a splotch of india ink and we have to turn it into an art piece. It was easy for me last year, but I really struggled this year and made several sketches before I just started. I created it on whatever paper Ms. Medsker used to put the ink on, and I painted it with exclusively acrylic paints.