TGIF!!

Until I opened the paper this morning, I forgot that "The Incredibles 2" opens today. The first one is probably my partner's favorite movie or has to be close to his favorite. Since I am working from home today and he can ditch work a little early, we bought tickets to a 6:00 pm showing. We never seem to go to as many movies as we plan and we mostly go to them when they hit the second-run theaters. I can't wait until it's time to go to tonight's movie!!!

I started this landscape yesterday and finished it today.

#233 - Dirt Road Near The Cabin - 8" x 8" - paper

Painting landscape after landscape is helping. While I can't say that I like any of my landscape paintings, I am enjoying the thought process and trying to improve. There are several things I feel good about with this one. There is more of a distinction between the foreground, middle ground, and background than usual. The trees in the background recede to me. These trees really were an extremely dark green and I decided to use a blob of pthalo blue red shade in my green mix. I like what it did. While I don't care so much for the foreground trees, I do think the different parts of the painting read as being distinct. It was fun playing with different types of paint strokes to try and do this.

My plan is to keep working on landscapes, although I will take a break at some point during the month. One of things I learned from the recent session of painting class is that I need to occasionally re calibrate by doing some 10 minute paintings or one stroke paintings. Plus, it's good to mix up painting from pictures and painting still life.

Two Tries Of A Simple Landscape

I took a break from water. These two paintings are from a picture I took at the MN Landscape Arboretum. The picture was taken mid-day with the sun overhead. Much of the picture was dark and I'm not great at adjusting for that. Still I really enjoyed painting the sky with this first attempt. The trees ended up being overworked with layers and layers of paint.

#231 - Simple Landscape Take 1 - 8" x 8" - paper

In the second one, I tried to not overwork the trees.

#233 - Simple Landscape Take 2 - 8" x 8" - paper

At first, I painted the dark shrub in the middle and left the shadow black. I didn't like how it looked, so I gessoed it out. I still don't like how it looks, but I'm ready to let go and move on.

Back To Landscapes

I continue to encounter all types of different issues when I try to paint a landscape. Rather than shying away, I'm feeling stubborn. My goal is to focus on landscapes for the rest of June from which I hope to gain some additional skills or ways to think about or approach a landscape painting.

This seems like a reasonable response given painting #228. I got lost while trying to do this painting. In spite of adding a 4 x 4 grid to the picture and to the painting surface, I managed to goof up the depth of things, so I decided not to finish it. This feels like a different chapter in the same book. When things like this happen, it's frustrating, but at least I can work to improve on things I'm aware of. There are many other problems with this, but messing up the depth of things was the biggest. I also think this was an issue when I went out painting plein air over Memorial Day weekend.

#229 - Minnehaha Creek - 8" x 10" - paper - not completed

In that vein, here is a painting from a smaller cropping of the same picture of Minnehaha Creek.

#230 - Minnehaha Creek - 8" x 8" - paper

I didn't sweat getting the color of the water accurate, but I did struggle with trying to figure out where the water was cooler in tone and warmer in tone. It seemed to be cooler in the light and warmer in the shadowed areas, which does not make sense to me. Given that and that I don't trust my eyes in making these distinctions, I want to keep thinking about the cool or warmth in the things I see.

Sometimes The Universe (Or Craigslist) Provides Something You Really Want

Once I started using the tabletop easel I borrowed from Kat, I thought to myself that it would be nice to have an easel. The first time I looked on Craigslist, this one was listed for a very modest price. I picked it up this morning. As a  hobbyist, I didn't want to buy new or spend a lot.

To say I'm thrilled would be an understatement.   

My Masterpiece

My masterpiece gets no respect from Hammett. Whenever I go to take a picture of a completed painting, one of the orange cats always appears and gets in the way. It must be part of their job description.

Here is the completed painting with no obstruction. It does seem like it's my masterpiece. It must be because it's so large. On the blog, of course, it looks like the same size of all of the other pictures I post, but in person it takes up a lot of space and makes a statement.

#227 - Dorian - 18" x 24" - hard board

This was a terrific learning experience, plus it was fun! I adore this cat. In truth, I adore all of them, but this one is the easiest one to love. Looking at this painting makes me smile.

I want to focus on painting landscapes, but I am also going to have to work on some additional, large cat paintings.

With any luck, I am purchasing my own easel tomorrow. It would be a floor model, not a table top version. It was on Craig's List and the price was right.

A Rambling Post

Sniff. I am still sad that painting class is done. I enjoyed the camaraderie in class and seeing what other people are working on, what they struggled with, what questions they had, and so on, even though I think I’m always the one who talked the most in class!

The other thing I miss is the structure from having homework and knowing that we are meeting each week. While I do pretty well when I’m not in a class, I also know that I push myself to get more paintings done when I am. Since class wrapped up, I’ve been a little busier with work. While I still do something painting-related each day, I haven’t been finding as big a block of time to work.

Moving on.......I am having fun working on the large painting of Dorian. Most of this journey is about experiential learning. What that means is that as much as I enjoyed class, learning from others, and getting feedback, the most important thing I can do to learn is to keep painting and I certainly intend to do that.

Painting on a surface larger than I’ve ever done has been a good, new experience. It’s interesting to work with a size 10 brush and feel as though your paint strokes are puny in size. The other interesting thing is that paint is not a scarce resource. The good stuff (Golden Heavy Body Acrylic) goes a long way. While it’s felt as though I used gobs and gobs and gobs of paint while doing everything on the cat except the eyes, so far, all I’ve used is the paint that was on my palette. I don’t need to treat the paint as a scarce or precious resource.

I hope to finish the big cat painting tonight. I got held up because I ordered some larger paint brushes, since I think that will help with the background. Two of the large brushes are on back order, but one of them arrived today. Hurrah! Of course in the short-term, it would have been easier to take Kat up on her generous offer to borrow a big paint brush along with the easel.

Here’s the size 10 brush in the regular brand I use, next to my new size 12 brush.

While I was waiting for the brushes to arrive, I started on a painting for Art 4 Shelter for next year. I want to set painting goals each month, so I don’t get into a rut or develop too many bad habits. One easy goal is to paint one Art 4 Shelter painting each month.

It was interesting painting (and drawing out) something on a 5” x 7” piece of paper using a size 8 brush at the same time I’m working on the monster-sized painting. It may sound silly, but this added to my understanding / experience of paint strokes. Also when I draw, I tend to draw larger than I want to so thinking about and exploring size and scale is good.

Here is the source picture. This is a friend’s cat and I love the pose.

Other than the background, I was feeling pretty good about this one until the whiskers. Yes, I am calling this one “Whisker Failure”. There’s no failure quite like a whisker failure (written more in humor than frustration).

#228 - Whisker Failure - 5" x 7" - paper

I will try again, probably from a different photo, for my June Art 4 Shelter painting.

When Did Dorian Get So Large?

Last night was the last night of painting class (sniff, sniff). I really enjoyed the group and I am going to miss our weekly meetings. For the last night, we painted large!!! My other classmates painted negative space trees on paper taped to the wall.

Earlier in the week, I made a large piece of hardboard (18" x 24"), cradled it, and prepped it with gesso. Kat let me borrow a tabletop easel, so I set up my very, very large painting surface. The #10 bright brush I was using was small compared to the painting surface. While it eats up a lot of paint and takes a bit of work to get enough paint in your brush, it's fun to make crazy, big paint strokes. I worked on this for a little over one hour in Kat's studio and was exhausted, mostly from drawing out what I was going to paint.

I set up the easel and painting in my basement late this afternoon and worked a bit more today.