A Rambling Post

Sniff. I am still sad that painting class is done. I enjoyed the camaraderie in class and seeing what other people are working on, what they struggled with, what questions they had, and so on, even though I think I’m always the one who talked the most in class!

The other thing I miss is the structure from having homework and knowing that we are meeting each week. While I do pretty well when I’m not in a class, I also know that I push myself to get more paintings done when I am. Since class wrapped up, I’ve been a little busier with work. While I still do something painting-related each day, I haven’t been finding as big a block of time to work.

Moving on.......I am having fun working on the large painting of Dorian. Most of this journey is about experiential learning. What that means is that as much as I enjoyed class, learning from others, and getting feedback, the most important thing I can do to learn is to keep painting and I certainly intend to do that.

Painting on a surface larger than I’ve ever done has been a good, new experience. It’s interesting to work with a size 10 brush and feel as though your paint strokes are puny in size. The other interesting thing is that paint is not a scarce resource. The good stuff (Golden Heavy Body Acrylic) goes a long way. While it’s felt as though I used gobs and gobs and gobs of paint while doing everything on the cat except the eyes, so far, all I’ve used is the paint that was on my palette. I don’t need to treat the paint as a scarce or precious resource.

I hope to finish the big cat painting tonight. I got held up because I ordered some larger paint brushes, since I think that will help with the background. Two of the large brushes are on back order, but one of them arrived today. Hurrah! Of course in the short-term, it would have been easier to take Kat up on her generous offer to borrow a big paint brush along with the easel.

Here’s the size 10 brush in the regular brand I use, next to my new size 12 brush.

While I was waiting for the brushes to arrive, I started on a painting for Art 4 Shelter for next year. I want to set painting goals each month, so I don’t get into a rut or develop too many bad habits. One easy goal is to paint one Art 4 Shelter painting each month.

It was interesting painting (and drawing out) something on a 5” x 7” piece of paper using a size 8 brush at the same time I’m working on the monster-sized painting. It may sound silly, but this added to my understanding / experience of paint strokes. Also when I draw, I tend to draw larger than I want to so thinking about and exploring size and scale is good.

Here is the source picture. This is a friend’s cat and I love the pose.

Other than the background, I was feeling pretty good about this one until the whiskers. Yes, I am calling this one “Whisker Failure”. There’s no failure quite like a whisker failure (written more in humor than frustration).

#228 - Whisker Failure - 5" x 7" - paper

I will try again, probably from a different photo, for my June Art 4 Shelter painting.