Slowly

Slowly, that’s how I paint these days. 

In my basement, working slowly, for a relatively short period of time, I’ve been able to focus and concentrate in a better way. That means it’s taking me 3-4 days to finish one small painting.

In past posts, I’ve mentioned how I tend to focus on paintings with only one object in them or when I’ve tried to branch out and do something slightly more complicated.  It’s taken me a long time to feel like I can try and tackle more complicated scenes, but I’ve been enjoying that lately.  

One thing I’m finding is that it helps to feel a connection to the photo.  I’ve been interested in this photo that I took at Crex Meadows in Wisconsin, but have not felt ready to try it.  That worked a lot better than another one I tried recently.  It was also a photo from the same trip.  For some reason, I thought that I should try to paint that one, since backgrounds are still a mystery and it had an interesting, but blurry background.  I thought it would be easier to tackle, but I was approaching it from the standpoint of something that I “should” do.  It did not go well. 

One other thing……When I’ve finished several recent paintings, I’ve felt that I’ve done the best work that I can currently do and that feels good.  Afterwards, of course, I can see things that I wish I had done differently and areas I’d like to improve.  I also know there are things I can’t even see yet, which also need to be worked on.  However in the moment with a paint brush in my hand, it just feels good to be reaching and stretching. 

I feel a special connection with those paints and that includes the first one that I ever painted of a cat.  It was during the first set of painting classes with Kat.  It was a painting of Ella and by any standards, it is not a good painting.  I was terrified to try and paint a cat, but I did it and when I was done I felt that I had done the best that I could based on what I could do at that point.