Whisper, rustle...rumour...sussurro is hard to translate.  The best meaning I think comes from the very sound of it, it's sibyl soft whistling  just below the surface of perception, where all of the murky sensations come to life.  This is the stuff fresh off our senses, the marks of unprocessed life, before the filing, the organizing, the naming, the articulating.  They boil richly and freely, they enter through our eyes, ears, fingertips, through our lips and the edges of our tongues, through the surface of our skin.  They collect inside of our bodies, just before traveling to the brainstem for processing, and for a moment, they ARE our here and now.

Recasting the same image might appear to be a long laborious process, a boring undertaking.  But as a matter of fact, this is the arena in which all of the mysteries of the first work come back into play and you get another go at handling them, another chance to resolve.
Of course the issues are never entirely the same, but similar enough to make it intriguing and sometimes infuriating.

I find it difficult sometimes to motivate to paint.  There are two types of this issue and I don't know which one is worse: one kind revolves around a sense of dissatisfaction with progress...perhaps there comes a point in the development of an image where everything one has been trying to achieve comes crashing catastrophically down into a hideous pile of disappointment.  It can be very difficult to overcome, but very frequently turns out to have a bonus.  Despite the initial desperation at seeing one's work amount to crap, I find that this is a crisis that I MUST go through in any image that eventually reaches a successful finale.  So, this can, ultimately, be a very good type of crisis.
Much worse is the second kind, the sort of generalized free-floating anxiety type of ennui that nails one in one's place preventing further action...for this kind I am still searching for a remedy...

Exploring the same image in pen and ink in my new watercolor moleskin...I love the way the differing mark making forces the description to change even while I strive to describe the same thing...
Anyway, "sussurro" (whisper) is a word that has been buzzing in my ears for a long while now, originally I thought of it as the name of a tiny row boat on which I would make my escape in the middle of the night...but that is another image...
The gouache set I inaugurated in the second sketch, "Sink or Swim" is brilliant and easy to use!  sort of a one chance tool, no going over, going back, the opposite of oil painting. 
Have primed another canvas, speaking of which, in a dark mauve textury gesso, and I plan to work on the same image AGAIN!

This latest session was dedicated to consolidating the light shapes, particularly in what is now the top right and center. 
Next session I will be defining the dark areas that run down the sides in teals, blues, and greens.  I have been thinking of adding some words in the background and messing it up with some sound, atmospheric dreamy hand lettering (in deference to Cy, but not as neurotic). 
In the meantime I have been loving this rotating image, a suggestion of my friend Lisa, who, while looking at the image on skype during one of our endless video chats, started spinning her laptop to see if she could visualize some more faces or noses, or bunny rabbits!!!  Thanks, Lis, xoxo

Started working on the green, with Terre Verte and Turquoise...a bit of gray...got plenty of work to do and a house guest...it is very difficult for me to lay on paint with any kind of thickness, but that is my goal, to use a big fat brush and to lay on the pigment...was very relaxing today, painting and hanging out with Harris.  I even let him paint a little bit.  I like his fresh approach and his keen eye!