Surprise - - It's A Painting Of A Cat!

I had some goals for what I wanted to accomplish with this painting, namely:

• Less blocky long paint strokes and more thumbprint paint strokes. 
• Better ears.
• Less defined edges.
• More suggestion.
• More black gesso showing through the darkest parts.
• More variety, overall.

Dorian - 03/04/17

Overall, I am pleased. The face shape is better, but the tilt of the face is off. While this did not fulfill all of my goals, it felt like I was going in a different or new direction, which is hard. It's especially hard for me to suggest. I struggle with wanting to define. The ear on the left could use a little work, but I am going to leave it. It was a good attempt at a suggestion, but where the ear connects to the rest could be grounded to the rest of the face a bit more.  

The next time I paint something other than a tree I might try to only use thumbprint type paint strokes. I tried to have more in this painting, but managed to cover most of them up. 

I've painted from this picture one other time and it helps me to compare to the earlier attempt.

Dorian - 11/29/16

Here is the picture. I love this picture. Dorian does not like having her picture taken. She usually scowls and/or turns away. As a kitten, I tried to take pictures of her with a flash too many times.  

Tree #2

Wow. I may have to paint a lot of trees. It is so, so much fun. This time, I tried to go with a "thumbprint" type of paint stroke all oriented up and down and did not overlap colors as much as yesterday.

It's been extremely helpful to go back and revisit negative space. With these types of paint strokes and with the negative space, the edges between the tree and background are more suggested and less defined. Is this what is meant by having hard edges and soft edges?  I'm not sure, but these edges look very different from what I usually do. I mostly define edges with a hard, directional paint stroke that screams "hey, look at me. I'm an edge". That is not necessarily bad, but having variety is better. For awhile, I want to keep playing with this loose tree style to get this type of edge drilled into my brain.

As a point of reference, this is one of my favorite paintings. While there are fun blocky paint strokes in this painting, all of the edges between Chandler and the background are definite, hard and unyielding.

Seeing Trees

I am thinking about playing around with negative space trees as a way to have time to paint, while I'm taking an on-line class. Yesterday morning, I had a dentist appointment and another appointment after that. As I was driving around, I kept noticing the shapes of different trees and the direction and shape of their branches. I only looked at the trees when I was at a stoplight, because they were so distracting. It made otherwise, ordinary driving around town fascinating!

I also sketched a few of them, since I was early for both appointments.

Finally, here is a negative space tree. It was fun and relaxing to do. Expect to see a lot more trees out of me. I want to work on mixing colors, controlling values, and making varied and different paint strokes.  It's a perfect way to do all three without a lot of fuss or prep.

Not Folding Chairs

I could use some more folding chairs in my life. This morning, I was early for my dentist appointment, but they were running late, so I tried drawing a couple of chairs in the lobby.

 My chairs still wobble, but they are getting better, especially since I did not use a viewfinder.

Creativity And Me - Part 2

I'm feeling the need to revisit the idea of creativity and me  These days when I talk about drawing and painting, more times than I'd like I get the comment that somehow it's because I am creative as though it was some magical gift given to me. While it's not the intention, I almost feel a bit dismissed by that type of comment.

For years, I did not see myself as creative in any way. One day, well into adulthood, it occurred to me that solving problems in an inventive, innovative or original way was one way of exercising creativity.  It also was strongly linked with my job. At the time and still today, my work frequently involves looking at the present state, the needed state, the problem, and the available resources. Figuring out the an effective way to solve a problem is creativity in action. This was my first small, crucial step in deciding that I was creative.

My early and continued muse for creativity has been Kristin Nicholas. In this earlier post, one of the things that I talked about was the kits for small projects, such as gloves, mittens, or hats that she created when she was Creative Director at Classic Elite yarns. The kits gave you a pattern to follow, although there usually were several options, and beautiful yarn in yummy colors. The rest of the decisions, as to colors, motifs, and so on, were left to you. This link includes a picture of a postcard that accompanied the mitten pattern. It gives you an idea of the individuality that was encouraged. I'm not sure that I realized at the time how perfect this was. It allowed me to flex my creative muscles within a set limitations.

I also appreciate the limitations that I picked up from Kat Corrigan. First off, she is an incredible teacher with both knowledge and joy that she freely shares in her classes. One limitation of the best limitations that I picked up in class was only using five paint colors on the palette. Everything I've done in acrylic has come from just five colors. Without this, my guess is that I would have burned up countless hours trying to find the the "perfect" colors. Instead, I make my own. Fewer choices has been freeing and it's a good challenge to figure out what I can do with what I have. (Smile). This is a good philosophy for life!

I think the limitations are key. I think there are a number of people who see creativity as making something out of nothing. While that may happen, I think creativity mostly comes into play (literally) in an environment of limitations. You walk up to each limitation, push on it to see if you can move it or flex it and see what happens. Your response is creativity. It can happen at work, in the kitchen, on the easel, anywhere.

On Tuesday the meeting topic for my Toastmaster's group was creativity. That's part of the reason for this post. As part of preparing for the meeting, I found this Forbes article. When Carol Marine talks about doing 500 paintings that's the same as talking about the craft side of figuring out an artistic skill. I also liked this one from the Harvard Business Review. In my mind it address some of the downside of not recognizing or accepting one's creativity.

Partial Outdoor Sketch

If it looks like a bunch of weird shapes coming together in no particular way, yup, it is. That's the McNamara Center on the University of Minnesota campus. My view was from the west and I didn't have a full view of the building. I also did not have time to put in windows, doors or any other features.

Since I'm just practicing, I probably should stick with easier buildings, which are mostly rectangular. What can I say? It caught my eye. I had a few minutes, so I gave it a try.

Ella In Repose

This is my lovely cat, Ella. She was facing a window where the sunlight was pouring in, making some interesting shadows on her right side.

Cheerleader:

• I like the drama of the lights and darks and that I left the black gesso showing through on one entire side. 
• The painting also "reads" as Ella to me. 

Editor:

• While it's been wonderful to be painting, I haven't been pleased with my paint strokes. These aren't too bad, since Ella is a very sleek cat. Even so, I could use some more feathery strokes for the tufts coming out of her ears. I've been paying more attention to shapes and my paint strokes are a bit too exact and "blocky" in capturing the exact shape. I'd like to be lighter and suggest more.

Having time to paint is going to become difficult. While I was tempted to sign up for the next sessions of Kat's painting classes, I was going to miss too many of them. Instead, I signed up for Sketchbook Skool's class called Seeing. Starting Monday and for the next 6 weeks, I expect to be sketching a lot. If I have limited time to paint, I may try to do 3 or so negative space trees each week. There's very little set up. I can play with mixing colors and also with paint strokes. Plus, they are fun to do.