Caretaker Mode

I am in full caretaker mode. My hubby had hip replacement surgery on Thursday.  While it is especially important to take care of him, I am also working to take care of me and the felines too.

That meant on Tuesday, I treated myself and took a 3 hour class at Wet Paint called “The Science of Seeing”. It was taught by Suzann Beck. I wish I had more time and energy to write about it, but I don’t. Since I took a lot of notes, I am hoping to remember most of it when I refer back to them. Two takeaways which I will briefly mention is that she talked about and showed us the impact from everyone having a dominant eye, similar to being right-handed or left-handed, and why it is important to back up and look at your painting from time to time. She also mentioned painting in less light, rather than more, if possible.

The other thing is that I changed my lighting in my basement painting “studio”. Daniel helped me put up the white shower board the day before his surgery. I had changed my set up and had taken the board down awhile back. More important, I changed the bulbs to the equivalent of 40 watt bulbs. I am bouncing the light off the white board, so I am back to having almost no shadows.  Hurrah! I feel like I can “see” things better in a slightly lower light level. Plus, when I throw light on an object, I think it will be easier to see differences in values. I’ve noticed that I tend to dull/gray up my colors too much and I’m wondering if that was a by-product of too much or too harsh lighting. I’ve only done one 10-minute lime painting since my lighting changed, so we will see!

I am hopeful that I will get at least one 10-minute painting done before I go to bed tonight. Plus, I might read some of the newspaper.