Staying with a series

Given my time and energy limitations, I'm experimenting with sticking with a series.  This has been an interesting challenge but once I made it clear to my brain that we were doing snails, nothing but snails, and all other ideas were not going to be acted on, I started getting tons of ideas about snails.  (I used to have 2-3 different projects going at once so I could switch between them when I needed to think about something on one.)  So now, I have 2 snails going at once.

The first pair used the painted snail on watercolor paper with a marbled background.  I found two different ways to use the background and one of those used the onpoint orientation that I like a lot.

Snail #1: Persist!  started with an idea based on a photo I took of a yellow snail crawling across tiny gray gravel.  I mentally added big grass stalks behind the snail and started to do that idea.  During the process, I remembered I wanted to use marbling so I pulled a marbled fabric for the background and then put stone fabric against it.  No way.  Not a good visual.  So I dropped the stones for later and went with the marbling.

Snail #2: Go With the Flow continued the use of the marbling with the hand painted snail.  I liked the change in the flow of the background.

With the next pair, I went back to the grass & gravel idea.  Snail #3: Journey of a 1000 Slithers (title still in flux since snails don't actually step) got the gravel added back in but while I was selecting the background fabric, I was captivated by one of the spiral pieces I've got in my stash.  So no grass yet.  That's coming in #4.

I'm learning things with each piece and getting more and more ideas so right now I have at least 4 snails jockeying for position to be piece #5.    Right now, I'm feeling good about the whole process.  My energy is up, I'm finishing pieces fairly quickly and the ideas are surging.  I am in the zone!