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.