Rest Day(s)

Since painting class finished up, I’ve painted somewhere between 5-6 days each week.  While I would like to be at 7 days per week, deciding up front that painting most days or a the majority of days during the week is the right place for me.

I can take responsibility and commitment too far and I think that contributed to losing my art practice during most of the pandemic.  I kept at it because I felt like I should do it and I wanted to do it, but I was also burned out and lacked the energy or the right type of energy to draw and paint.  I pushed myself too far when it would have been far better to turn down the responsibility and turn up the rest.  

Rest may sound like a funny word to use for this.  However, I’ve been thinking about rest in a different way.  I’ve started exercising regularly with 5 days of exercise and 2 days of rest.  I really need the rest days.  They support and allow me to show up more fully on the exercise days.  

When I’m a certain combination and level of brain and body tired, painting drains rather than nourishes.  Sometimes, I’ll push through and paint anyway, but sometimes taking the day off is a better choice. 

Here are two paintings from this week.  I’ve painted from this photo before.

I did not have a plan when I painted this one, plus I rushed in places and was not careful mixing colors.  This will not being going into the stack for Art 4 Shelter. Even so, I wanted to document it. 

The Calm Before the Storm

In spite of this winter dragging on and on and on with things like record setting snow or yesterday’s morning temperature of 9 degrees (windchill of minus 7), I am not talking about that type of storm.  Later this afternoon, the house will be full with 9 people to play cards and have dinner.  While I am looking forward to this and it should be a blast, I feel rusty with hosting social gatherings.  My spouse has a healthy accumulation of vacation at work, so he took some time off this week and really shouldered the burden of getting ready with doing a ton of errands and cleaning.  

There’s still a list of things to get done today, but it feels manageable.  

When I got up this morning, the house was quiet.  I brewed some tea, sat in a chair with two house cats close by, and looked at pictures on the IPad.  For painting, I want to work on landscapes or outdoor scenes and I want to work on 5” by 7” pieces, so I can give them to Art 4 Shelter if they turn out.  

What I’m finding is that when I am looking in my pictures, I am drawn to scenes that have too much detail.  I like detail.  I like complexity.  I like lots of fussy little bits. That leads to poor choices for what I want to currently explore, especially when working small. 

As a result, I spent time this morning slowing down to look at some of my photos in a new way to find both interest and less details. This meant cropping like crazy. 

I am not sure I was completely successful, but I have several pictures that I want to explore.  It was a good exercise and it was a good way to start out on a busy day.  It also has me thinking about being more aware of those simple scenes and settings around me at any time, so I can generate some new photos to explore. 

Also, here is a painting from earlier this week. I think this was a reasonable photo choice, but I don’t want to go with anything more complicated than this and less complex would probably be better.  

Lots and Lots and Lots of Choices

Sunday was the last painting class and I am a little sad about that.  It was good to see Kat and learn from her.  It was good to have homework.  It was a really good group of people.  

One part of our homework was to paint from a photo taken by one of the people in the class.  I tend to stay in my comfort zone and paint relatively simple scenes most of the time.  In comparison, this one had a lot going on.  Also I took the assignment literally and painted directly from the photo.  Cropping or adjusting it did not occur to me.  There was a good overall discussion about this in class, so that was learning moment.

The other learning moment was just about everything with this painting.  It really drove home that all of this is a series of choices.  Some work and some don’t.  I am feeling more comfortable with that at the moment and don’t feel as constricted or stuck. 

I worked on this on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, since I’ve had to work in smaller blocks of time.

In class on Sunday, I started a landscape and did not get very far with it.  In class, it was hard to find my way.  When I got lost in the drawing, I ended up putting some of the pieces in the foreground to help place things.  It felt good to work this through to completion when I finished it up tonight.  Once again, I was more aware of all of the choices and that some worked and some did not.  

I like the reference photo and am sure that I will revisit it at some point after I’ve tried some other landscapes.  

Learning, Again, and A Look Back

Tomorrow is the last week of Kat’s painting class.  I’m a little sad about that but am so happy that it’s gotten me painting again, plus I’ve really enjoyed the group of people in class.  

In so many ways it felt like starting over and/or that I have been relearning things.  One of the things that surprised me (but shouldn’t have) is that continuing to show up and work in the face of frustration is the best thing to do, because usually some sort of break through or ease tends to follow.  

This week painting has been enjoyable and I feel like several of my paintings just sort of happened.  Not everything has worked, but I’ve felt more presence and ease.  The prior week everything felt like a struggle.  

Here is one of the two paintings since I last posted.  I am almost done with the annoying black paper that I purchased and am using up!  Darn paper.  It tears sometimes into the painted part when you pull it up.

I went a little overboard with the reflections back up on the paper, but I explored that a lot this week along with just picking unabashedly loud background colors.  

The look back is, of course, to three years ago today.  When I was looking at my phone, Google popped up a series of photos I took exactly three years ago and it was like traveling back in a time machine.  Even before I looked up my blog post from that day, I remembered that it was a Wednesday and I had been planning to go to the Minneapolis Institute of Art to see an exhibit that was closing soon.  I decided to risk going, because I really wanted to and I also thought it might be the last opportunity to do something like this for awhile.  I remember not touching any door handles with my bare hands and other things like that and, at the time, those precautions felt so foreign.  

I suspect a lot of people will be looking back and thinking about the before time.

At times, I’m aware of the continued impact.  One area is that while I enjoy and crave social connection, it’s so much harder to initiate.  Really long or large social interactions also seem to take a lot more energy than the before time.  Last week was the MONDO juggling festival and when I was talking to some friends, I felt reassured that I am not the only one feeling like this.  

One of the other losses throughout much of the pandemic was my art practice.  I just could not muster the energy and brain power to keep it going, so I let it mostly drift away and it’s taken three years to get back to a new starting place.  

Periwinkle Magic

I love the magic of mixing color.  When I set up to paint last night, I used a periwinkle piece of paper because I liked it with the other colors.  Time has been limited, so my set-ups have been rather slap-dash.  

I try not to get hung up on getting the exact color, but also wasn’t sure how to mix a periwinkle with the colors on my palette.  Last night, the magical thing happened where I just mixed rather than get all tight and constricted by consciously thinking about it.  I didn’t labor over it or spend forever trying to mix it.  At one point, it just seemed like adding a little Phthalo Blue Green Shade was the right thing to do and, viola, a periwinkle color appeared!  It also was pretty darn close to the color of my paper. 

One Stroke Per Color

Both painting yesterday in class and today at home, I have felt so free and I think it’s opened me up a little to seeing things I don’t normally see.  The assignment has been to do one stroke per color, so I’ve been enjoying trying to get as much mileage out of each paint stroke as possible which has meant both being strategic and just going for it!

While I think playing with color, overall, is one of the reason I’m drawn to painting and using a limited palette, I’m also really having fun seeing how many ways I can make a size 10 bright brush twist around places I want to go. 

After fighting with myself all last week, this is such a welcome shift.  

Here are the two paintings from class, yesterday and last night’s painting.

Ahhhhh.  The blue shadow of the paper bouncing up on the orange was so pronounced it was easy to see.  When I got this one home, I did work to fix this a bit, so it conforms to the shape better. 

This is last night's painting.  I should have stopped a bit earlier, since I did start to get a little fiddlely, but I was having too much fun. 

This might be a good way to thing about approaching the "base" layer of my paintings, since one of my bad habits is to delve into detail too quickly!

This pear is past it's prime and I think I need to buy another pear.  Mixing up Pthalo Blue (Green Shade), Hansa Yellow Opaque, and Quin Magena into the "dirty" yellow-green of a pear has added to the fun so far this week.    

A Series of Unfortunate Choices

A different person in the class committed to paining mugs all week and wasn’t thrilled about it.  I was actually a bit excited to try some new things, but was surprised by how much I struggled.  It was a tough week.  Time.  Drawing.  Composition.  Paint strokes.  Concentration.  You name it.

This may sound incredibly dour and negative, yet it’s actually not that bad.  It’s good to be painting again.  It’s good to paint a little every day, even on really busy days.  Last and most important, it feels like I learned a lot.

Here are this week’s paintings.

There are the paintings from class last week.