Day 2 Disaster!

This is not the internal critic speaking. This is a curious soul who is wondering why initial progress in learning is so frequently followed by disaster. In a recent post, I mentioned that after a successful run of a new or difficult juggling pattern, the next several runs are fall apart immediately. I've noticed the same thing with art. From Saturday's class and the start of "a pear a day", I could see something that I wanted to explore or build upon. When I went to paint a pear yesterday morning, let's just say that it did not go well.

11/04/19 - Pear

I think this shows that I had left the place of the beginners mind, where you can stay open and curious, to letting the everyday mind (or at least my everyday mind) start down the path "aha, I think I can do this" or focusing on the result or something like that. I can feel it better than I can explain it, but it's way more autopilot versus being fully present and curious. Of course, disaster ensues. The mind is such a tricky thing. I didn't start out intentional or deliberate. The next time, I am going to try, try, try to set the intention before I begin that I am exploring a process and new medium.

In the meantime since I was working from home, I took a break mid-morning and played on crappy paper with more openness and curiosity.

A Pear A Day For Most Of November

One and a half years ago, I took Roz's bookmaking class for simple round spine books. So far, I have made one and only one book, despite intentions to the contrary. Worse yet, I've used about 5 pages in that book.

After Saturday's class, I've decided to do 20-30 days of pears in watercolor in this book. Pears come in such lovely colors and they have appealing shapes.

I want to start more of my days with art-making. I want to play with watercolor. I want to be exploratory not exact. I want to paint pears. I want to use my book. I want to see what happens.

11/03/19 - pear

For now, I'm probably using too much water and not letting things dry. My guess is that people with more experience with this medium would be horrified. I don't care. I think the blotches are kind of pretty and I'm having creating and exploring with them.

Beginners Mind

Yesterday, I spent the day in class at Wet Paint. The class was Gestural Watercolor with Monica Fogg. She was an affirming, generous instructor and has a background in teaching art. It was a lovely day.

I lucked out getting into the class. It had filled and I was put on the wait list. On Thursday, I found out I was in. That may have contributed to how I approached class. There wasn’t time to overthink things. So on Saturday morning, I decided to leave the internal critic at home, along with any anxiety or insecurities. This has been a year with a lot of change and growth and I decided this class was a gift for myself and I was going to have fun, learn what I could, and embrace whatever happened. All of this led to the perfect combination of approaching this class with beginners mind.

While there weren’t any extreme cases in the other participants, it made me a little sad to hear other people’s comments which made it clear that their internal critic, anxieties, or insecurities had accompanied them to class. Been there. Done that. Know what this can look like and sound like. I wish I could push flip a switch for myself and for other people just make this go away forever.What a gift that would be to myself and to others.

Anyway..........I had a lovely day. We did some different exercises, which included mixing up colors  you might find in a green pear or a red pear. I went a little crazy and filled about 1/3 of the sheet initially. At lunch, I filled the rest of the page. My color mixing was intuitive. When I had a splash of color, I’d mix some other color into it, just to see what would happen.

We did some other exercises and, after that, it was time to spend some quality time with pears. One great thing I learned is that you can play around with watercolor on less than great paper. My 3 stroke pears and the ones below were done on a crappy 85 gsm paper, which I have, but don't enjoy drawing on. I’m thrilled that I can use it up as warm up paper for playing with watercolor. For the 3 stroke pears, I was being very literal. Monica noticed that when she was checking in on participants and suggested using a brush with water to move the paint around. That didn't count as an additional stroke. In the 3 stroke pears, no one thought about or represented the negative space. When we were given up to 10 stroke pears, Monica mentioned negative space and people started to consider it.

At first, I was unhappy when the end of the stem bloomed into the top of the pear, when I let two wet parts touch. Later, I decided I liked it. Overall, this class and approach is a fun way to explore watercolor. Since you are more exploring the idea of something rather than a true representation, it's easier to let go and let the medium do a little (or a lot) of what it wants.

For one assignment, we practiced some simple thumbnails. If you were happy with one of the scenes you set up, the next assignment was to paint it or you could set up something different. There were apples, squash, gourds, or pears to choose from. For my thumbnails, I had a larger scene, but when I went to paint I focused on two pears which seemed to have a lovely relationship. They weren’t holding each other up, but they seemed to be there for each other.

I lost any gestural aspect and overworked it, which also meant that there’s not much value range. This may sound like the internal critic speaking, but it’s not. When I was working on this, I was in the moment, in the zone, and in a place of enjoyment and learning.

I tried a second set up, but didn’t get very far with it. The group was circling up for another round of comments and feedback. For the last assignment, we could do whatever we wanted to. I decided to try and be more gestural with a pear and to be clearer about light, medium, and dark values.

It was a really, really great day and I think this class got me out of my art-making-avoidance funk. Slowly, it’s been lifting, but as of yesterday it’s dissipated and is gone. Hurrah!

Three Is A Magic Number

When I do a series of timed paintings, I typically take an 8 inch square block and divide it into 4 equal parts for 4 different timed paintings. Every time it seems as though versions #1 and 4th are lacking. The 2nd version has some good stuff going on. The 3rd attempt is always the best one. Why is three the magic number?  I have no idea.

In a different realm, if I am part of juggling pattern with other club passers, it never fails that after a particularly good run of a new or complicated patterns the next several tries will fail right away.

My guess is that there is some scientific explanation  for all of this based upon how people's brains work.

#348 - Timed Pear Painting #3 - 4" x 4" - paper

I finished this one several days ago. The shadow is goofy, but besides that I like it. My attempt to use paint strokes to build the shape worked much better than usual, especially for a timed painting, I also liked the colors I mixed, since this was different pear from the last timed painting I posted. That previous pear was part of Saturday's dinner. By the way, the last painting I posted was version #2.

Last night, I finished painting #4 and also just played around with mixing pear colors and playing around with painting a pear without drawing it out first. None of this was particularly successful, but it still felt great to do.

Today, I went to a meeting of nonprofit financial types and worked on some quick, basic sketches of people, in margins of the handout when I got bored. Here are the two of them. While the poses are similar, it was two different people.

A Non-Painting, Painter

That's what I've been, but it's not what I want to be.

#348 - 10 Minute Pear - 4" x 4" - paper

Even if it's only one 10-minute painting per day, I need to make this a priority, again, and see about painting on more days than I don't.

It's hard to express how good it felt to mix up some colors and make some brush strokes, even though I was feeling awkward about it all.

There Is A Reason

There is a reason why my house can be on the chaotic and slightly messy side. This morning I could have started the day by doing a little house cleaning or by blowing bubbles for one of my cats. Yup, you guessed it.  Bubbles won out.

Also, anything you can do becomes even more fun when you try to get good photos. I had a small tube of bubbles. I had to blow the bubbles, set them down in a mug so they wouldn't spill since it would have taken too much time to put the stopper back in the top, pick up my tablet, and shoot the pictures. The tablet helped, since it took a live snip/video and I could go in and select the specific shot that I wanted to keep.

I like the look of anticipation in this one.

The amount of ease and stretch in this one amazes me. Cats are such masters of movement.

Playing with bubbles with a cat is very different than with a dog. When I was a kid, I used to blow bubbles for Henry, my golden retriever, irish setter, who-know-what-else mix. He would chase them and pop them with his mouth. He would do this so many times that he would have white froth around his mouth from all of the soap.

Lots And Lots And Lots Of Knitting

Soon, very soon, this blog will return to its focus on drawing and painting. I'm really itching to get back to that. In the meantime, I have been knitting, knitting, and knitting.

Last week, I was away on a trip involving my biological roots. I left on Wednesday afternoon and spent time in town 1 to visit the place where my biological mother grew up. I did things like go by the home she grew up, find out what I could at the historical society, and spent time at the public library trying to find pictures in old high school yearbooks. I found more pictures of my bio-mom's older sister and brother, who both died tragically prior to reach adulthood, than of my bio-mom, but was really glad to find any pictures.

I stopped in town 2 on the way to town 3. In town 2, I went to the cemetery where all of my bio-mom's immediate family is buried. There is a Jewish custom of leaving a stone at a grave site.  I don't know where it originates. I left both a rock that I gathered from my trip to Ely on the family marker, since the family lived in the Iron Range of Minnesota prior to moving to town 1. I also brought some tufts of grass from the family home and divided that among the individual stones.

I  arrived in town 3 on Friday afternoon. The purpose was to meet my 1/2 sister on my bio-paternal side and to meet her 4 children.  1 new sister plus 3 new nieces plus 1 new nephew = 5 new relatives and I decided to knit each person a hat. It was a good trip and I enjoyed meeting everyone.

I tried to get each person's favorite colors, but not everyone provided this info. If they didn't, I just did what I wanted.  This idea to knit hats occurred to me 6 weeks before the trip and it helped me process and deal with the emotions surrounding this trip. 

Here are the hats.  They were all knit with either Nashua's Julia, Classic Elite's Color by Kristin yarn or Classic Elite's Tapestry yarn.  These are my favorite yarns.  They are very similar to each other and I decided to go with yarn in my stash.

I liked how all of them turned out. I especially like this last one and am making another one in different colors for me.