"Deep Under"

I painted for the first time with acrylic paints last night, and wow, it was so amazing.  I've taken a drawing class before, but all we used were graphite pencils, charcoal, pens, india ink, and erasers.  That was also a beginning drawing class.  I signed up to do the intermediate drawing class, went to the first lesson, seemed like it would be a lot of fun, but it just didn't feel totally right for me.  So, here I am, doing my own thing :)  I'm thinking of picking up a book on acrylic painting.  Right now I just have black and white paint, and two brushes.  I have already learned that a square-ended brush produces much different strokes from a rounded brush; the square one will be good for edging, but the roundy one is much more flowy and fluid and finishes strokes nicely.  And I have a feeling I might be going through paint rather quickly, I think I'm already a good portion of the way through my black.  I think I want to maybe pick up A color, like a blue or an orange or something.  I would like to experiment mixing my black and white though, like maybe do a painting of a scale from white to black, and all the shades in between.  Something else I know I want is to pick up three little square canvases, each matching in size and no bigger than a square foot, and do a painting straight across all three canvases, then separate them and hang them a couple inches apart.  This will probably take a few trials because I'm thinking of how the resulting painting will translate once separated.  Like, if I did something spherical across all three, it might look weird with space in between; but if I did something straight and more or less linear, it would probably look alright spanning across the three canvases, also depending on what I want to convey and how they'll look with the spacing.  Eee!  I'm so excited!  I think I'm gonna have to go pick up some more canvases tonight.  Hmm...must think of new ideas...

Last night when I was initially thinking of painting, I wasn't sure if I should do like a landscape or an object or just something kinda random and abstract.  I actually found myself thinking of the way David Bromstad (yes, the Color Splash guy) paints; just sort of inspired by the rooms he designs, and just sort of a splash (yeah I said it) of colors and designs.  When I went to go do my first painting, I wanted some sort of gradient from black to white, but wasn't sure how to go about it.  So I was painting painting painting painting, black black black black, and then all of a sudden the little flicks that my brush was making at the bottom of the strokes started looking like birds.  Hence...

I'm pretty happy with it for it being my first painting.  This is definitely going to be a kick-ass experience learning this new artistic medium for sure.  So now I go, in search of inspiration!