An Apple A Day

Yesterday, I purchased an apple from the co-op. It’s a nicely shaped, green apple with a long stem and a tiny leaf still attached. It’s a ridiculously cute apple, making this the first time I’ve ever used the adjective “cute” to describe an apple. It’s been my test subject for painting today and yesterday. I’ve been doing a quick outline (without grid lines) and just going for it.

This is yesterday’s painting.

#279 - Cutie Pie Apple - Take 1 - 5" x 5" - paper

Here is this evening’s painting. 

#280 - Cutie Pie Apple - Take 1 - 5" x 5" - paper

Both paintings were good practice and came together fairly quickly. It helps that they are small and are simple objects. Since life is incredibly busy, I'm glad I've figured out a way to squeeze in some painting time each day. While I would also like to be working on my drawing, I haven't been able to squeeze that in. Although this weekend, I did do a quick outline of part of my medicine cabinet in the bathroom. I'm trying to focus on being more accurate withe relative size of each object. 

Fussy-Wussy Versus Just Do It

Yesterday, I fell down the rabbit hole of fussy-wussy-ness. I am trying to figure out  how much paint versus how much diluted medium (which is another variable to figure out) will get me the results I want. This painting was on a piece of hardboard, which was lighted painted with medium and allowed to fully dry. This acted like a clear gesso. I set up the board in the table easel and painted away. I  did want some of the panel to show.

Overall, I went too far both by over-painting, which it may not look like, since I also over diluted my paint. Towards the end, the paint mixture started to run down the panel. At that point, I decided I was done and let it dry flat.

This may sound negative. It's not. It was a worthy experiment.

#277 - Acorn Squash - 6" x 6" - hardboard

Today, I had very little time to paint, so I went with a different experiment. Not being familiar with the materials is bringing out too much fussiness, so I just decided to practice and get on with it. I used a stiffer brush and that seemed to work better. 

#278 - Onion - 5" x 5" - paper

Gesture Practice

Tonight was the second night of class. One thing that I really appreciated was that the instructor demonstrated a gesture sketch for me. As I was watching him draw, it made sense, in a different way, what he was doing as he was working out shapes and relationships. He finished it by making lines which more clearly defined the objects.

While it made sense to me in the moment, it’s not as clear to me now that I am home. Still, I came home and practiced three quick sketches of items in the kitchen. While I am trying to loosely show the object’s relationships to each other, it’s still way to easy to go to the outlines.

The best of the three is this one, although I really should have placed a line showing the edge of the kitchen counter and should have show the shadows underneath the objects. Still, the proportions and relative size of each object were pretty good, except for the sad delicata squash in the lower left. While this may not be a gesture drawing, it’s less fussy than what I usually do.

Practice Makes ???

Tomorrow is the second painting class. I've been practicing. Since work is busy, I haven't had the time I'd like, which is both good and bad. It's probably good, since it means I just have to move along, try new things, and not fret. It's also making me draw more quickly, so I don't have time for accuracy or details. The bad part is that I'm way outside my comfort zone.

Earlier this week, I painted a pepper.

#273 - Pepper - 8" x 8" - paper

 I am finding it challenging to mix the paint with the medium. I probably need to go darker with it all, since it's hard to get light lights. Overall, this painting seemed very sloppy to me, so I took several additional minutes to try and focus on the stem. From there, I tried to build the shapes that came up to the stem. I did this in a very small area below the painting, so it's probably on 1" x 1.5".

Focusing on a very small part felt more doable. 

Tonight, I took the time to do 2 paintings. I rather like how the scissors turned out, especially since the underlying drawing was really rough. Also, it felt like I was painting the values and shapes rather than trying to paint scissors. I did give myself a break and used pencil to draw rather than charcoal. 

#274 - Still Life Practice - 5" x 7" - paper

For the second painting, I used diluted matte medium on the paper before I painted. It suddenly occurred to me that the instructor did this (or at least I think he did - - this is one of my questions for tomorrow's class). Some of my challenges might be from painting on "raw" paper. I was tired, so I did this one fairly slap-dash. 

#275 - Mug - 5" x 7" - paper

New Painting Class

Last week, I started taking a 5 week painting class with Carl Oltvedt at Wet Paint, although I’ll miss the last week of class. While it’s good to branch out, it’s also blowing my mind, since it’s a very different way of working plus currently my painting ability is either broken, rusty, or just in an awkward period. We warmed up with gesture sketches of a still life. I really, really don’t get gesture sketches, but I’m trying. For now, I just feel like I’m making a bunch of scribblely lines on paper.

When we started painting, we used matte medium diluted around 25%. We will also be using gloss medium. Other than using glazing liquid, I haven’t used any mediums with my paint. It’s another thing to figure out, as well as painting on a light surface. One of these, I did in class. The other one I did at home. Just for the heck of it when I was done, I tinted some glazing liquid and very lightly applied it to both finished paintings.

#270 - Still Life From Class 1 - Take 1 - 5" x 7" paper

#271 - Still Life From Class 1 - Take 2 - 5" x 7" paper

As time permits, I’m practicing painting this way at home.

#272 - Apple Practice - 8" x 8" - paper

Plus, I am trying to practice doing gesture sketches.

My goal is to stay open, go along for the ride, and embrace stepping WAY WAY out of my comfort zone. Stay tuned......

Other Paintings And Drawings

During the period I was not posting, I did keep drawing and painting, although I did lose my daily habit. Here is a quick and brief summary of some of the stuff I did. There are a few paintings, which I am not posting. that is partly because I don't care for them and partly because I want to get caught up, so I can post about what is happening now.

My niece has a beautiful cat. I downloaded this picture from Facebook. Here is my first try.

#265 Munchkin Take 1 - 8" x 8" - paper

Here is the second try.

#265 Munchkin Take 2 - 8" x 8" - paper

Also, fall arrived, which means leaves. I am either in an awkward or rusty phase with painting, but I know if will pass eventually.

#268 - Leaf - 8" x 8" - paper

#268 - Another Leaf - 8" x 8" - paper

I also did some drawing. Partly dried leaves curl up in ways which are interesting to try and draw.

One morning, I sat with a green pepper. While I didn’t finish this sketch, I do like it, even though the proportion of the stem is comically off! I drew it the morning after I read someone’s blog post about the importance of making your darks really distinct.

“Eggs”-cuse Me

Back to our regularly scheduled programming and normal blog posts.........

Yesterday morning, I knew that it was going to be a busy day. It turns out that I didn’t have time to paint (darn), but that made it especially important to draw for a few minutes.  Since my hubby was making pancakes, there was an egg shell sitting on the kitchen counter. I rinsed it off and set it down across from me at the kitchen table.

I warmed up with trying to do gesture sketches (in spite of the fact that I still don’t understand what they are or how to do them). After I did the sketches in the top row, I got up to fill my water glass. When I got back to the table, the egg shell was gone. My hubby thought he left a drippy egg shell on the kitchen table and was cleaning it up. I retrieved my egg shell and we had a good laugh.

I like the loose drawings at the bottom better than the gestures at the top.

"Eggs"-cuse Me drawings - 10/20/18

This set of egg shells was from several weeks ago. It was a weekend morning and my hubby was making eggs. He likes to cook breakfast on the weekends. Lucky me! The egg shells on the counter just looked interesting, so I tried to draw them.

Eggshells 10/06/18

Why I Didn't Report

This blog is supposed to be about art and my journey with learning how to draw and paint. Occasionally, I'll cross over into the rest of my life, but not often. When I do, I try to stay away from the heavy or negative stuff of life, although it was really, really important to acknowledge Ella's death in September.

That makes this post way out of character for this blog.

If you just want to share my art journey with me (and that's fine), I would suggest you stop reading this post and go to the next one.

Before I was over the most intense part of grieving for Ella, what was happening in politics and our culture hit me like a ton of bricks and I spent several weeks walking around in a fog. One week after Christine Blasey Ford's brave appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee, I made a conscious decision to start being open about a painful part of my history.

I was sexually assaulted as a pre-teenager, by one of my brother's friends, and as a teenager, by my mother's second husband.

It's been scary, awkward, messy and uncomfortable to openly reveal this after so many years. While some people knew bits and pieces and several people knew most of it, it's mostly been a secret I've carried around.

I started to tell people by sending an email to my closest friends, followed by an email to my family, and another one to my husband's family.  I've received a great deal of love and support back from people. As important and helpful as that has been, something even more important happened. Once I started to share this with people, I was surprised at how much relief I felt from putting down the burden of carrying about this secret. In this crazy, messy world, I have been feeling lighter and freer.

However, that feeling has not carried over to my blog. Since I have not been capable of or able to write a blog post in more than 3 weeks, I think it's time to be open here as well. I am tired of hiding.