Warts and All

I censored myself in my last post and I'm amused at myself for doing that.  Here is an experiment from early January.  I was playing with creating a dandelion-like flower, similar to a Charles Beck woodcut in my kitchen, using the end of my brush in concentric circles.  Actually, I tried several paintings this way.  They all bombed.  Part of the problem was that yellow and orange colors don't have good coverage.  You need to add extra layers of color.

Live and learn.

January and February Paintings

Here are some paintings that I did in January and February, in addition to doing a lot of trees!

I purchased a basic set of acrylic paint that included blue, red, white, black, and yellow, some inexpensive student brushes (brights from size 4 to 8).  The surface was heavy paper (100 pound) in a spiral notebook.  The paper was 6 inches square.

I used artist's tape to create a frame around each piece of paper and prepped the paper with black gesso paint.

In painting class, we did not use black paint.  In both the above painting and the one below, I get why. It looks too harsh.  Dark grey or brown works much better.  In my knitting life, I used to love how colors looked next to black yarn.  One of my favorite all around creative people, Kristin Nicholas had a lovely dark brown yarn in her yarn line and used this in lieu of black in many of her designs.  She mentioned in her blog or in an article that black and white yarns tend to sell the most, but that she did not use them much in her knitting designs.

I still have a long way to go on capturing shadows, but at least I've improved from my first several attempts!

One time I tried to loosely recreate a picture from the newspaper.

I was happy with the result.

Towards the end of February, I quit painting and waited for painting class to start!

Daily Painting - 04/29/16

I took the day off of work.  It was too cold to garden outside this morning, so I did things inside, including this painting of an apple.

Self critique:

• I like the apple.  This is the third time that I've painted this apple and this one captures the shape pretty well.  This apple is going into a Waldorf salad tonight. 
• I do not like the background.  It's too complicated and does not work. The apple is on a place mat on a table with the wall in the back.  The shadow really does not work!!

Paint and learn!!!

Random Musing

On Tuesday night, I went to Kat's studio.  She had invited people to come by and paint items for Art 4 Shelter.  This is a fun and unique fundraiser for a well deserved nonprofit, Simpson Housing Services.

At some point in the evening, Kat was talking about the Chuck Close self portrait at the Minneapolis Institute of Art.  She mentioned that if you look carefully at the edges of the canvas, you can see his markings where he divided up his canvas.  This observation thrilled me and I want to go to the MIA soon and look at this painting, again.

This has stayed with me for several days.  I'm using this same technique on my tiny, tiny painting surfaces.  Across a wide spectrum of experience and mastery, there are a bunch of people using the same tools.  Now, of course, there are.  This is hardly an original thought, but the world of creating art has been a black hole of mystery.

It also makes me think about a friend of mine taking mandolin lessons from a well-known teacher. Apparently, this teacher starts his beginner classes and his master classes with teaching the same technique.    

Creating art is a process.  I didn't realize that.  This is why I am so intrigued and smitten with learning how to draw and paint.  I love process.  You get to break a large thing into smaller parts.  For each part, you can ask a bunch of  questions such as "how does this work", "how can I do this better", or "what tools do I need",  This also is the part of my work life that I like the best.  I love figuring out the puzzle involved with creating a good process.  Add on to that the need to mix and play with color and that pretty much explains why I am hooked.    

Over the last two weeks, I painted 4 items for Art 4 Shelter.  Here is the one that I like the best.  It's the first time that I've painted a dog.  Although it does not look like the dog in the picture that I was painting, I'm still pleased with the result.

February 2016 Drawing Recap

In February, Creativebug had a February drawing challenge.  I think they were surprised by the interest from January.  They took existing content and divvied it up into 29 segments.  Because of that, there were less options for how to draw each item.  Instead, there was a bit more information about things such as shading, shadows, and so on.

During the month, there were several blind contour exercises.  Essentially, you look at the object you are drawing and you draw it.  While you are drawing, you do not look at your pen or your paper.   You can stop and look at your drawing every 15 seconds or so.  When you are looking at your drawing, you do not draw or move your pen in any way.

This is my left hand.  It's funky and bizarre and I like it in a weird sort of way.

At the same time when it was not clear if Creativebug would continue the drawing challenges, a group of people from the January drawing challenge started a private page on Facebook.  They decided to create a weekly drawing challenge.  For that one, all you had to work from was that week's theme.  Finished items were supposed to be posted to Instagram.  This was quite a bit harder.  Especially for week 1, I just stared at the page and thought what do I do?  The theme was garden tools, so I went out to the garage and brought in some tools.  I kept it simple, focusing on things that I thought that I could draw.  I also did some practice drawings of those items.  I also didn't worry about composition.  For week 3, the theme was spaceships.

Here are some other drawings from Creativebug's daily challenge in February.

All of this drawing was helping.  I remember one evening in February looking at the glasses sitting on my desk and deciding to try to draw them.  It was amazing to feel like I had some basic information and practice and could try drawing something that I selected, just because I wanted to.

Also in February, I decided to draw several safety pins in a flower dish of mine, rather than try and draw the specific pins and dish in the Creativebug offering.  This drawing made me so very, very happy.  The proportions are off a bit, but I remember thinking I could not have done this on 01/01/16.

One last thought........I've been cropping pictures before posting them using Snapseed.  I really enjoy the cropped result, so much better than the original picture.  There's less visual distraction.

January 2016 - The Journey Begins

At the same time that I decided that I wanted to learn how to create art in 2016, an online crafting community, called Creativebug started the year with a January drawing challenge.  Creativebug charges a nominal monthly fee.  In return, you get access to their online classes.  In January, the instructor for the 31 day drawing challenge was Lisa Congdon.

Each day in January, you could download that day's video.  Lisa would show 3-5 different ways to draw whatever that day's item was.  The goal was to try drawing every day.  Participants were encouraged to post their drawings to Instagram.

The January drawing challenge gave me a place to start.  I have no drawing experience.  I had no idea how to represent something in the form of a drawing.  The whole idea of even trying was a little scary and intimating.  It was immensely helpful to have someone give you options.  Plus, Lisa's style is representation, which made it easier to try.  

In hindsight, it also was helpful to be encouraged to post a picture of each day's drawing to Instagram.  I don't want to be self-conscious (although I certainly get that way at times) about being a beginner in this new world and I want to capture the experience and journey.  I figured out that there are no art police out there ready to take away my pen, pencil and paper.  Occasionally, I would get an encouraging comment from someone. Lastly, I could look at what other people were drawing. Although the blog is new, it's working much better for what I want to document.  Still, I'm grateful to Instagram.  

Here are two drawings from the first week of January.  Most days, I tried to draw the chosen object "my way" in addition to the way that Lisa showed.  On 01/01/16 (day 1), this was the tree in the lower left-hand corner.  Day 3 was rough.  I still have trouble with perspective and chairs with normal looking legs are still beyond me, but I keep trying!!

This is my favorite drawing from week 2.  I pulled out a combined broom and dust pan in my home and tried to draw that, in addition to the options that Lisa presented.

In week 3, I started to settle in and have a little more fun.  I started to put a tiny, tiny amount of attention to trying to fill the page with some sort of composition.

Finished

Finished last night.  I am really pleased with the result, especially since I painted it using a drawing done by hand (rather than using tracing paper).

First Painting

I vaguely remember art class in grade school and have no recollection of any other experiences after that. In the last several years, I would occasionally think about learning to draw, but never made any concrete effort.

All of that changed near the end of 2015.  I signed up for a 3 hour class at Wet Paint with Kat Corrigan on December 29, 2015. It was an acrylic class.  In the class description, it was made very clear that all you needed to do was be able to follow directions. The assignment was to create a negative space tree.  It was a blast.  Each class participant was given paint in white, red, yellow, blue with a green undertone, and  blue with a red undertone.  I love color and was mesmerized by mixing and playing with color.  I could have mixed and mixed and mixed. Eventually, I did follow the instructions and ended up with my first painting on canvas.

I bought some supplies and started experimenting with painting on my own.  Here are some other trees that I painted early on.

This next one was inspired by a Charles Beck wood block print.  I really like this one.

I played with making the tree into a birch tree.

I did more. Here is one last one to share.

Painting In Process

I'm experimenting with how to paint a grey cat with colors other than just grey.

First Blog Post

This is my first post on my first blog, making me not exactly at the forefront of the blogging world.  My hope is that blogging will help me capture the experience of learning how to make art and, hopefully, will track both improvement and growth.

This blog is mostly for me, but I did make it public.

One of the many things to capture and document is the journey from an idea to a finished painting. Since I have no past experience, my drawing skills are a hindrance to the process. Using tracing paper removes this barrier, but I really want to be able to draw what I paint. For paintings based upon a picture, my current work around is to divide up both the picture and my surface in a grid pattern and try to draw the picture onto the painting surface.

Today's picture:

The process is very, very slow, but it helps me truly see what is in front of me. I use a pencil to measure the different angles on the picture. Frequently, I am astounded. My eyes lie. My pencil helps me see.

Drawing in process:

I am happy with this drawing so far. The surface is a spiral notebook with heavy paper.  I taped the edges of the paper and painted the paper with black gesso.