Bird & Dog All Year - collage/painting Process Post

This is from Day 4 and Day 5 of the Between Speech and Silence online art class by Diane Culhane that I talked about in my previous post. First I made a colorful underpainting with acrylic paints on a gessoed wood board (8"x8"):

Added torn magazine pieces:

Started painting some shapes/outlines, settling on a birdhouse and doghouse too:

I drew a bird sitting in a nest on the roof of the doghouse at one point but didn't like it so I painted it out - you can see all that purple mess on the left side of the doghouse roof, that's where the nest/bird was:

Then I kept adding color:

I added a few details with black pen to some of the leaves and on the houses. I also added some dots and stars to the background with black pen but didn't like the way they looked so I painted them out. Here is my "final" piece:

I enjoyed the week-long class by Diane Culhane and would recommend it to you if you're looking for a few fun and simple exercises to spark your creative/colorful mood or just want to learn some new techniques. I'm calling this 'Bird & Dog All Year' because even though you can't see Bird and Dog in this painting, seeing their houses makes me think about the interactions of bird and dog all year, Dog watching Bird, Bird watching Dog, Dog chasing Bird, etc.