Looking and Seeing

I am back in a session of painting classes with Kat.  She is such a good instructor and also is so generous in spirit and information. Tomorrow is the last session of a set of five sessions.

My wishes for myself are to keep the habit going and to slow down not just to look, but see. It takes so much more time to see and wrestle with your brain to trust your eyes and ignore your brain.

I struggle with wanting to jump ahead and get to the “fun” part of playing with the paint, but when I actually slow down to see the ending result is better. Remember that! Also, remember Kat’s suggestion to talk to yourself out loud about what you see to help override the brain.

A later goal is to work on more confident paint strokes and doing a better job of paint control (not too much or too little) on the paint brush. 

This one has a lot of layers and took quite a bit of time. I am so pleased with it. It’s the best likeness I've gotten of a picture.  It doesn't hurt that it's one of my orangies, Chandler. 

Sometimes when I’m finished, I can step back and say I did the best that I am capable of at this time and I feel that way about this one.

Back in 2016 when I attended my first set of painting classes, I remember feeling the same way about my first attempt to paint a cat. I remember feeling terrified to try and paint a cat. When I was done, I also felt a rush of pride for the attempt and at the time, also felt that it was the best I was capable of at the time. 

We all start where we are and thankfully with practice and some good instruction that starting point gets better over time.

Drawing Project

Yesterday when I read Roz’s blog post about projects, an idea flashed in my head to work on finishing one small, daily, quick portrait. I decided to make this a project. The plan is to spend 15 - 20 minutes per portrait and to shoot for 6 days per week. The overall goal is to get back to daily or almost daily creating. 

I started yesterday. Both the drawing from yesterday and today were done with a 6B pencil. I am using rather small paper and a dull pencil, so fine details are out. That makes it easier to “finish” a drawing.  

I am not posting the source photos, which come from the Museum app. For the top drawing, both eyes were looking up and I only got that with one eye. When drawing females, it’s hard not to “age” them. I really enjoyed trying to capture the shapes of her hair. 

Art 4 Shelter 2025

 I don’t have as any paintings as in the past, although I don’t think I did any last year. 

Here’s the one from the homework assignment from the latest session of Kat’s painting class.

I’ve still been working on copying paintings and one of the things I’ve been doing is copying some citrus paintings of Elena Katsyura.  She is on the web and Daily Paintworks.  I love the glow she gets.  I believe she is working in oil.  Given that and the limited palette, I am not getting that, but it’s been a fun exploration.  Here are two from life.  

The last thing to share is a quick drawing with my beloved Neocolor II crayons.  This is not for Art 4 Shelter.  I just wanted to do something this morning and didn’t have much time.  

The ground is from a mixture of color and pastel ground thinned with a bit of water.  It was a 15 minute or so quick study using one of the above pieces. It was fun, since I haven’t had the Neo IIs out for a long time. I am getting a knee replacement in a few weeks and wanted to have some easily accessible art materials to use as a I recover. 

The rind color needs to be a bit more distinct from the background. 

Transition

The last two weeks of art class involved landscapes and pets.  Working on a landscape that I started, but did not finish, and one that I did finish brought back all my insecurities in a surprising way.  Given that and the end of class, I stumbled a bit, but pushed through to not lose the painting habit.  

Here is the landscape that I brought to class.  

The week had some unexpected demands on my time, so I only painted on Sunday and Friday and I rushed the ending to just get it done.  At the same time, one of the lessons from Kat really sunk in about squinting and look for big shapes.  When I was mostly done, I caught a glimpse of my photo across the room, squinted and saw that my reference photo was mostly made up of 3 sets of shapes from the greenery along the edge, the bowl of the falls and the falls.  I don’t think I tend to notice things with this type of cohesion and I think this will help as I continue to practice.  

Here are a couple of cat paintings. 

One thing I want to focus on is paint strokes!  When I’m doing simple objects like fruit, I like the blockiness I get a lot of the time.  With a complicated structure, I don’t know what to do.  So much to learn!  

One of the people in class mentioned copying paintings off of Pinterest and she had an owl painting.  I went out and pinned some cat and owl paintings and.want to work off of some of these to see what I can bring back to my paintings.  I’m not sure it’s appropriate to post a picture of the entire copy, so here’s a partial.  

It was a good learning experience.  I’ve never done this and think I could learn a lot.  

Best of all, I am still painting and will continue to post, but probably not as much as I did the first few years after I started.  

Try Harder Things

That is the theme of the next two paintings to share - - try harder things.  I remember the first time I tried to paint a cat.  I was slightly terrified.  The painting represented the best I could do at the time and I have always felt a tiny bit of pride when I look at that painting on this blog.  No one would say it was a good painting, but I faced my fear and did it anyway and that was the start of working to learn how to paint a better cat portrait.

I like buildings and structures and Brendon Farley’s paintings of scene of the streets and alley’s of South Minneapolis and I have been afraid to try doing that. 

One of the homework assignments for today’s class was to painting something from outside your window.  While I miss the tree that used to be in the alley next to my garage (and I wonder if it will impact my hummingbird sightings this year since that was the best place for a hummingbird to perch to guard two of my feeders), I do like looking out the kitchen window at my purple garage and across the alley to the neighbor’s house and garage.  I love color and the pop of the orange-red of the flat part of the neighbor’s garage is always fun to see.  

I took a picture of that, cropped it, and painted it and I felt a bit of that same rush from trying something that I am afraid to try and I think I found a little more freedom to keep trying paintings like this, so I can get better at them. 

One of the many challenges was how to make paint strokes interesting when you are painting a flat surface with straight edges like a garage door or all that sky, since I edited out some trees  I plan to ask Kat about that in class.  Also, how can I imply the boards of wood on my garage, instead of making them so obvious.  That’s just a few of the things!

Last week, I tried to paint the tiny glass bottle and an orange in Kat’s class and it was hard. She let me borrow it and I gave it a second try, which I think shows improvement from the first try.  I also had fun with the pepper. 

I have been painting most days, not every day, and I am so thrilled to be back at it.  It was a long and frustrating drought. 

Paint Something In Your Bathroom

One of the assignments for class yesterday was to paint something in your bathroom.  I was planning to do that on Friday, but did not factor in my morning eye appointment.  When I came home, my eyes were dilated and I figured I would not be able to do this.  By the afternoon with my eyes back to normal and carving out an hour to paint, I did this.

This one is for Art 4 Shelter.  

I had so much fun giving this a try and I am pleased with how it turned out.

Between this painting and yesterday’s class, it feels like I have my groove back. I am inspired.  I have a mental list (that I really should write down) of things I want to try.  I want to push myself.  

There is so much to learn and try.  I would like to improve my compositions.  Here are several attempts.  I am not thrilled with the results, but it felt really good to give both of these a try.  Although I got frustrated with the spoon and just stopped working on it. 

 

10 Minutes For A Painting

I have been painting more and blogging less.

Last Saturday in class, it was the 10-minute painting exercise and I felt really good in class.  All the sludge going on in the world receded and I felt very present and open.  

It’s a nice group of women and a big part of what I enjoy is seeing what other people are doing.  We are using the same materials and working on the same assignments for the most part.  The biggest variation between people seems to be paint brushes.  

It’s fascinating what people do.  One person uses a tiny brush and just sets things up and goes to work.  One person for last week’s homework took a deep dive into shiny things and the colors she found in the shine was amazing.  

I always feel so inspired.  

It can be hard to put your own work up for others to see.  After that initial reluctance, it’s okay.  Enough time has passed that everything looks a little better for a fresh eye than I might have recalled.  

In class last week, we did the 10 minute painting exercise.  In one of my spiral notebooks, I already had an 8” x 8” ready to go where the ground was pink and I had brought a green apple. 

While I can’t quite replicate this exercise as well at home, the forced pressure and limitation of doing a 10 minute 2” x 2” painting 4 different times is actually freeing.  There is no “do not”.   There is only do and even if the piece ends up with significant issues, there is something magical about the process and result as well.  You are in the moment.  Some decisions work out.  Some don’t.  While there is pressure, the stakes are very low and it’s a good way to get into “the zone”. 

I like painting on black, but, occasionally, it’s also fun to try a different ground.  When I do this and my first stroke goes down, my visceral reaction is slight panic.  OMG.  What have I done?  This color is not behaving the way it should.  The passes quickly and it’s time to get to work.

Here’s what I did in class.  

Since class last Saturday, I have done 2 more sets of 10 minute paintings, although I did cheat and go longer on several ones.  Also, time constraints meant that I would do 2 of them and go back and do the other two later.  You lose a bit by not doing 4 of them. 

Pears could become my favorite fruit to paint.  

Someone in class last week had some lovely deep red apple paintings.  I find it difficult to paint deep red apples and decided to give it a go.  I think I still need to add some more white and have been practicing this in some other paintings.  

For the rest of these, I’ve been trying to do 37 paint strokes or less, although I always seem to lose count, or trying to limit the time spent painting. 

This one was painted on a green background. I’ve been playing around with using a flat brush rather than a bright.  I can get juicier paint strokes with the flat, but my edges get sloppy and I’ve been losing the outer shape of what I’ve been painting quite a bit.  That happened with this one.  I also find that I tend to lose shape more often or worse on the left side of things and I have no idea why. 

For some reason, this one really annoyed me until I noticed the top.  Here’s a crop of just that. 

This pear seems boring to me.  

I took an in-process photo of this pear painting.  

This was a 15 minute painting and I got too fussy and lost my original paint strokes.  

There is so much to learn and so many experiments to try and I am really thrilled to be back and painting more regularly.