A Very Long Post

I am getting ready to mail off a package to Art 4 Shelter for their event on May 15th. It’s hard to believe that I’ve submitted items for 4 years! This year, the plan was to submit 12 items with one being painted each month. That didn’t happen. The current count is 6 paintings. While they are still accepting artwork through the end of April, I want to get my items in early. In two weeks, one of the members of my household is getting a hip replaced. With that and Kat's online class, I don't see myself getting more of these done and mailed. 

Here are the pieces I am going to mail. 

Whenever I paint something on a 5” x 7” piece of paper, the intention is that it's for Art 4 Shelter. As always, there are items which get rejected. For those, I’ve gotten better about tossing them in the garbage, since I don’t need them around. It’s a balance between being honest, but also not being too picky.

The biggest motivation I get from drawing and painting is not the end product, but instead how it changes how I interact and process the world. I notice more and, when that happens, I try to slow down (at least sometimes I do) to really process and enjoy what I notice.

This morning, Hammett, one of the orange cats, was sitting in my lap. He was looking up to watch the birds and squirrels through a very high window in our kitchen. I found myself looking at and really seeing his eyes. The edges of his eyelids were a delicate light shade of lavender, except in the lower corner where it transitioned to a slightly-darker-in-value, soft, rosey pink color. The color of his eyes closest to his pupils was the same color as some of the lighter color of his fur, which is an orangey-yellow, more towards orange. While the rest of his eye color is more yellowy-orange, more towards yellow. I also could see two different highlights in his eyes. The reflections back from the windows created  highlights in his eyes which were horizontal, but slightly curved, in the color of  light gray with overtones of blue. He also had the smaller, bright highlights which are a color closer to white. When you paint these in they make the eyes in a painting come to life.  Until I started painting, I never noticed these highlights.

Hammett has been my cat for years. I've looked at him many times. I've studied pictures of him in order to paint him. He has very light color fur around the outside of his eyes which frame and highlight his eyes so beautifully, I've never gone deeper to really see his eyes. It was shocking and wonderful to see the orange in his eyes, the lavender eyelids, and all the rest.

Not long after the experience with Hammett, I opened up my refrigerator. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the green apple with a sticker/label on the apple. Instantly, the thought flashed in my mind, how would I show the label in a painting? The label has a curve to it, one side is slightly larger, and so on. 

It was that kind of a morning.

I am sure there are many people out there that don't think any of this matters. I'm not sure how to express this, but I think it matters greatly. For now, I'll just say that it's adding a richness to my life. 

Changing subjects, I've been taking Kat's online painting class. Maybe, I'm not changing subjects as much as I thought, since I find myself noticing things watching the videos that I either missed or couldn't "see" in her live classes. Since she has a camera pointing down, the vantage point is different. As a result, I am picking up things about how she grabs paint to mix colors and get paint in her brush in a way I wasn't getting in live class. I've never understood how she can get the "right" amount of paint on her brush, so that the brush isn't either too dry or too globby with paint. I have a bad habit of loading up with too much paint, making it hard to get a variety of paint strokes and I haven't been able to figure out how to get the "right" amount. Something clicked when I watched the videos. Currently, I am bouncing between trying to break my old habit of a globby paint brush and picking up paint more effectively.

For class, I am planning on posting what I paint here and only send her the stuff I want to be evaluated.

We started with a color wheel and mixing gray and brown.

Mixing a good brown is still a mystery to me. However, this color wheel made me happy. I can't explain why, but I smile whenever I look at it. Because of that, it's hanging in my office where I can see it. 

We needed to do a value study of a simple object and paint it. This is a clementine. The top is flat, not that you can tell from my drawing.

Here's clementine 1. Blah. That's all I have to say. Blah. Okay, I'll also say that the top does not look flat. What's really interesting about working on simple shapes is that there is not a place to distract or hide.

#303 - Blah Clementine - 6" x 6" - paper

Here is take 2 when managing the amount of paint on the brush started to click. I took this photo part way through and I am glad that I did, since I should have stopped. Instead, I continued. At this point, this one looks like it has a flat top at the very top. Hurrah!  I do confess that it looks like a complete copy of Kat's style.  It's not my goal to copy her style.  It's been helpful to read some of Roz Stendahl's comments where she thinks beginners get too hung up on developing a style too early when what they should be doing is focusing on learning and developing skills. 

#304 - Flat Top Clementine - 6" x 6" - paper

Yesterday, I painted a lime. There are things which don't work and there's something which bugs me about it. I like the greens which I mixed and there is a shape to it. I do find it interesting that the clementine above has a lot more energy to it than this one.  The energy just seems to drain out of paintings which are overworked. Some people can layer paint and still keep the energy, but that's another thing I need to work on figuring out.

#305 - Lime - 6" x 6" - paper

This is a very long post, so I am going to wrap it up with one final thought. The challenge of switching back to painting from real objects rather than pictures always surprises me.

Art Critic or Photography Assistant?

This is literally where and how I usually take pictures of my paintings.  The back of the kitchen has big windows, so the natural light is good.  I put the picture on top of a footstool we keep in the kitchen and this happens.

Usually, I move the cat before I take a picture.  It's always this particular cat.

I don't paint flowers very often.  When I do, especially a close up, it's easier to paint the values and value shapes without painting a flower.  Maybe it's because a close up flower reads as a more of an abstraction to me.  I'm not sure how to carry this over to my other paintings. For this one, it felt like my thinking brain took a break and my processing or visual brain took the lead.  I wish this happened more.  It can't be forced, but I can create the right conditions, hope it happens, and enjoy it when it does. 

#300 - Como Conservatory Orchid - 5" x 7" - paper

I still like painting things which have big areas of white in them, which is hysterically funny to me since in most aspects of my life I've never met a loud bright color that I didn't like.  It's weird, but for some reason I tend to dull down my colors in my paintings.  Too much, I think.  Often when I'm done, I will look at something and think I should have let the colors pop a bit more.

White is fun to paint, because it isn't white.  While it's not visible from the picture, one thing I noticed in my picture was that the white on the left side of the flower was warmer than the white in the more shaded part on the right.  I tried to capture that.

This one and some of my other 5" x 7" paintings are for Art 4 Shelter.  This year the event is on May 15th and it's in a new location.  It's a great event!  Mark your calendars.  Plus, it's never too early to send them submissions.  Here are the guidelines.

I Would Like A Medal

This morning, I shoveled plow wash in the front, which wasn’t much, and in the alley, which was a lot, for 45 minutes.  In the alley, I have to push the snow with the big shovel half way up a path next to the garage, so I can scoop it up with the small shovel and throw in the middle of my yard on the garden beds.  When the piles get too high, I take a garden rake and push the snow towards the middle of the yard.  Even with all of that, the mound of snow is getting closer to shoulder height than waist height.

As a side note, I do have a kind and helpful partner, but I have been shoveling almost all of the snow this winter and all of the snow this past week.  The kind and helpful partner is having too much hip pain to help at the moment.

This morning about 10 minutes in, I found myself thinking thoughts along these lines. “It’s not too bad.  Since the snow wasn’t wet, it’s not as heavy and awful as it could be and the plow wash isn’t sticking together as much as it usually does. It could be so much worse”.

This can be summed up as thinking like a Minnesotan.  While I am not a native, I believe I have earned my advanced non-native Minnesotan certification and I would like a medal.  I would like it to have a snowflake motif.

Getting back to painting, here's the latest.

#299 - Texas Cat - 5" x 7" - paper

Snow, Snow, and More Snow

Somewhere in this morning’s newspaper, it mentioned that we’ve gotten 22 inches of snow so far in February. Let me repeat/rephrase that......Before counting today’s snowstorm, it’s snowed 22 inches of snow in February and it’s only the 20th of February.  Early in the month, I kept imagining a giant kitchen sink in the sky.  One faucet in the sink was to turn on extreme cold or and the other was for  for lots of snow and one of the faucets had to be turned on at all times.  It isn’t as cold now, but someone seems to have left the snow faucet turned all the way up.

That brings me to this morning.  I shoveled around 3 inches of snow before heading off to work at a client.  The drive was one of the worst I’ve encountered for awhile, mostly, because visibility was terrible.  I am in the middle of the city.  I can’t imagine what it was like outside of the city.  Driving home in the early afternoon was much better.  However when I got home, 6 more inches of snow was waiting for me.  

While I still absolutely love the snow and can’t help but smile when it’s snowing, it’s getting hard to shovel.  The piles are so high and I’m running out of places to put the snow.  Also, I really, really wish we would have gotten some of this in December and early January, since it was brown and ugly for most of that time.  

My partner-in-crime and snow-shoveling has been away at a conference in Phoenix the last week, so I have been a solo-shoveler.  He returns tomorrow. 

Earlier in the month, I was painting snow scenes.  I decided to take a break from that.  This is an acquarium scene from the Minnesota Zoo.  The source picture is from several years ago. 

#298 - A Painting With No Snow - 8" x 10" - paper

I rather like how the pink coral/mushroom-looking things turned out.

Constant Vigilance

This morning, I caught a glimpse of the painting I started last night out of the corner of my eye and I realized that I was back to painting the object in my picture, not what I actually see.  My most recent painting is not finished.  It's a fish in an aquarium at the Minnesota Zoo.  The painting before that is #297 (the rabbit) shown below.  I don't know why I drift back to painting the object versus what I see again and again and again.  I guess for my brain, what I think I know wants to push aside what I actually see. 

When my eyes win and I can paint what I see (in terms of shapes and values) without regard for the actual subject matter, it just goes better.  When I don't, it feels like I'm fighting with myself when I'm painting and I'm not fond of the process or the end result.  One symptom is that my paint strokes are clunky and generally awful.

I worked a little on the fish painting today and got back to painting what I see and enjoyed my time so much more.  Maybe tomorrow, I'll finish the fish painting.

In the meantime, here are some other paintings from the week. I did paint each day!

#295 - Winter Cardinal - 5" x 7" - paper

While I like the picture, I didn't like my executive, so I got it another try.

#296 - Winter Cardinal The Sequel - 5" x 7" - paper

It's still not what I want it to be, but it's better.

This is the rabbit painting.  Overall, I am not happy with it.  Rather than listing the reasons, I'll end on a positive note.  I do like some of the colors I mixed.

#297 - Rabbit In Raspberry Canes

Winter Rabbit

I tried to stay with big paint strokes, but that didn't translate well for a 5" x 7" painting.  Also, I was not sure how to approach two problems, both dealing with the background:

• How to "ground" the rabbit.
• How to get the snow to have the right feeling.  I took this picture last year in my back yard.  It was very cold and I wanted how cold it felt to come through. The white of my snow looks too warm to me. 

This was a fun composition to work on and I might try several more versions, but as 8" x 10" paintings. I didn't think about it until I was done, but you could almost approach this like a negative space tree, since there are so many nooks and crannies as a result of the raspberry canes.  

#294 - Winter Rabbit in Raspberry Canes - 5" x 7" - paper

This is the source photo. I cropped it differently for the painting. 

I must try to get my values more accurate the next time. 

Painting Practice - Day 2 and 3

So far, my (hopefully, mostly) daily habit is on day 3. Day 2, I drew out take 2 from the same picture of Hammett.  This is not a great picture, but the background is a light purple.

I got home from work early today.  First, I did the dishes and fed the cats.  I felt so virtuous afterwards, I went down to paint.  I am feeling really good about painting and most everything else, these days.  While I wasn't even trying for much of a likeness, this looks more like Hammett than take 1. 

#293 - Hammett the Dashing! - 8" x 8" - paper

Dapper, Dashing Cat

The camera loves Hammett.  He takes very good pictures.  I think of him as both dapper and dashing.  I'm not trying to make a bad joke (well maybe I am), but it means his name fits him quite well.  He was named for one of my favorite authors, Dashiell Hammett and it's not too far of a stretch from Dashiell to dashing.

#292 - Dashing Mr. Hammett - 8" x 8" - paper

Can't you just picture him in a fedora?+

It's Time To Start Again!

I've been drawing off and on the past several weeks, mostly working on cross hatching, but I can't remember the last time I picked up a paint brush until today.  Today, it became something I just wanted to do.  Surprisingly, it didn't feel self conscious or awkward at all. 

It started out great and I drew out and got a good start on a painting.  I was just going for big, bold paint strokes.  I lost that by over-working.  The painting is not done and it's too late to take a picture with any natural light, so there's nothing to show, yet.  Tomorrow, I plan to finish it.

The start of this painting felt so good that I think I want to focus on painting big bold strokes, trying to capture the broader essence, and not being focused on the end result.  All of which feels exciting and a good way to get back into the habit of painting!