'Day 19' of the '29 Faces' Challenge: A painting entitled, 'Moonshadow'.....

Yesterday was Day 19 of the '29 Faces in February' art blog Challenge.  I was up into the wee hours last night and didn't quite get my blog entry written before I was too tired to continue, and so I'm planning to post twice today, now with my Day 19 Face, and later on this evening with my Day 20 Face...

My studio time yesterday was spent working on my  entries for the Nibblefest Art Contest (NfAC)  , which starts today  (which I find really sort of mind-boggling because I can hardly believe an entire month  has gone by already since the last one (January's theme being 'Letters/Symbols/Numbers', which I wrote about here and here)..).

Any long-time reader will know that I love me some art Themes.   Ever the theme-enthusiast, for some reason I find working within the parameters of themes gives my creativity a little extra spark.  I can almost always manage to find inspiration in any given theme (almost!), no matter how broad or obtuse -- though I dare say the NFAC theme for this month, 'Moonlight', was probably one of the easier to work with.  I mean who doesn't love the Moon....?

So not only is the moon one of my favourite subject matters, but I was also able to use the theme of 'Moonlight' to channel into another of my favoured artistic obsessions, that being  the personal interpretation of songs and song lyrics.  My musical tastes can only be described as eclectic, but I do love listening to music very much, especially while working.  For this month's NFAC theme, I reflected upon my vast mental list of Favourite Songs containing the word 'moon' or 'moonlight' in their titles or lyrics, and conjured up so many at first it wasn't easy to whittle them down to just three.  I even had a couple of false starts, and switched songs a time or two.   But finally I came up with this:

"Moonshadow":  Acrylics on vellum mounted onto a reclaimed 3.5" x 8" wooden board

I've always loved the song, 'Moon Shadow',  by Cat Stevens, having as I do very fond childhood memories of my older siblings playing his albums.  With its simple, cheerful melody and optimistic lyrics, it's a song that has stuck with me all these long years, and one that I often sung aloud to my own children when they were small....

I had to quit working last night before I thought I was quite finished.  My plan was to give the background a bit of color today -- but looking at it this morning with fresh, rested eyes, I'm actually rather liking the understated simplicity of it.  Kind of like the song....