Sadie

This gets you to my first attempt.  This gets you to attempt #2 through #7.  It's still not quite there, but attempt #8 is getting much closer.

#171 - Sadie - 8" x 10" - paper - std palette

Year-End Painting Review

Two years ago on 12/29/15, I walked into a morning class at Wet Paint with Kat Corrigan and painted my first painting. I signed up for the class mostly on a whim and it was a birthday / Christmas present to myself. While I had already made a New Year's resolution to work on learning to draw in 2016, this class made me add painting to this goal / resolution. What a wonderful two years it has been. I like looking back. It's the main reason for this blog. It helps me capture where I was at and how I was feeling at the various steps in this journey. While there is so much to learn, it makes me profoundly happy that picking up a pen, pencil, or paint brush to try and capture a moment or image has become a normal activity in my life as compared to January 2016. Back then, putting a line on a piece of paper was anxiety-producing.

A lot of good things happened with my painting practice in 2017. First of all, I figured out how to fit in daily painting during a very, very, busy time this fall. Each day, I get up and paint. On most work mornings, this might mean only five minutes, but even in this short amount of time it is a good way to start a day. I also figured out that I have trouble maintaining focus at times, so painting in shorter spurts has actually helped.

After two years, I'm beginning to understand some of the basics. This includes mixing paint colors with the limited palette that I use. With paying more attention and experimenting a bit more, I figured out things like using more blue when mixing the tans and light oranges found in orange tabby cats or making grays more neutral. Some of this came from starting a second palette with a different blue and a different yellow, which caused me to slow down and think more about what I was doing. 

The biggest change happened over Thanksgiving when I had a major breakthrough with values and shapes. On the one hand, it's frustrating. Why did it take 2 years? Every bit of information out there focuses on these two concepts. I took classes. I read books and blogs. I watched videos. I thought that I was listening to the message, but I wasn't really hearing it. Experiential learning is like that sometimes. Understanding comes in its own time.

On the other hand, who cares. The message finally started to connect and it has improved my painting. I want to bring this over to my drawing in 2018. While I got better with line drawing, I mostly outline things and haven't figured out how to add depth, dimension, and volume. Working on values and shapes should help and this is a goal of my drawing practice in 2018.

To finish up this year-end review, I looked back on the paintings that I completed in 2017. Here are four of my favorites from throughout the year.  This one is from January 2017. I am not sure what to say about this one. I just like it, although maybe I included it so there would be one non-cat painting.

Next up is Chandler in the sink from May 2017 from when I was in a small group that met with Kat. She would give us homework assignments and the assignment was to paint your kitchen sink. I ignored that and went with the upstairs or downstairs bathroom sink. Trying to build any type of interesting composition was beyond me. I was having trouble mixing colors. My values were off. I did 4-5 paintings, which were disasters. Then one morning, Chandler was being Chandler and he crawled into the bathroom sink. I took some pictures. This put me back in my comfort zone, I was painting a cat with an unusual background.

This one and the next one tie for my favorite paintings of 2017. This one is the breakthrough painting from November 2017.  I was back in my hometown over Thanksgiving and decided that I would try painting 4-value paintings using the app, Notanizer. This is the first one I did. I painted this standing in the basement of the Airbnb where we were staying. I did not paint a cat. I painted the shapes that I saw in each of the values. It just flowed off of the brush. Yes, it is on the stylized side, but I love this painting. It makes me happy whenever I look at it. With this one and all of the other 4-value paintings, I still can't get over how little you need to actually paint an eye (or the entire cat for that matter). Both of the eyes in this painting are 3 fairly small paint strokes. Overall, this experiment really got me thinking.

My other favorite painting of 2017 is from December 2017 and, of course, it is a cat. It's great when  you capture the physical essence of something. It's even better when you luck out and also capture part of the spirit. This is Jacques and I like this one because it captures a bit of the Jacques-ness of Jacques.

 

Christmas Painting Present

Nope, it's not what you think. My niece wanted acrylic paint and I didn't want to decide the brand, type, or colors in case she had something specific in mind. On Christmas Eve, I decided to paint up some trading cards that she could trade for the actual paint when we went on a shopping trip. I had fun doing this, although the experience really made me a fan of red and less of a fan of yellow. The longer the word, the harder it was to fit and paint around. Each of the cards was something like 5 inches long.

I wrote up a card for her and tucked the trading cards in that. Since I was on a roll and feeling silly, I decided to write on the back of the card. Coupons always have so many legalistic warnings that a grabbed one and copied the warnings with a few revisions on the back of the it. 

I also gave her one of the Masterson's sta wet palette and a few other supplies. Yesterday, we went shopping and got her the paint! I hope she has fun playing with it.

Dorian

I finished this on 12/23/17. I started drifting back to being a little more fussy with details rather than shapes. Also, the face and position of the body are not quite right. Through a combination of the alternative yellow being a bit stronger and paying more attentions (because of the new yellow), my grays are closer to neutral.

#170 - Dorian 8" x 10" - paper - alternative palette

Currently, it seems easier to focus on shapes with creatures who did not live in my home.

Hummingbird - Take 2

I started this one back in the middle of Thanksgiving. After drawing it out and starting the bird, it got put aside. It was my main project this week.

#158 - Hummingbird In Flowers - 8" x 10" - paper - alt palette (both blue & yellow) 

I did not fuss with this one nearly as much as the first time back in October. Plus, the values are better in this one. I am so glad for the breakthrough over Thanksgiving. I just feel a bit more in control of an important aspect of painting!

This one will get another try, since I want to figure out better paint strokes for the flowers. There's also the issue of masses of shapes versus painting the individual flowers and I'd like to explore and play with that.

Something New

I've never tried to paint sheep before. This is from a picture of a sheep and a very sweet lamb that I took back in 2015 when I went to a class at Kristin Nicholas' farm house. It makes me wish that I had taken many, many more pictures of the sheep.

#169 - Sheep and Lamb - 5" x 7" paper - alternative palette

This was a bit of a challenge for a number of reasons including:

• It was painted on a small surface, although I did use a smaller brush..
• I have never painted sheep before. There are unique things about each animal that you figure out after awhile. 
• There are two subjects close together. I still mostly play it safe and stick with one thing at a time. 
• I'm transitioning back from 4-value paintings to trying to see more nuances than 4 values.

This may sound like a bunch of excuses, but it's not. I did find myself bouncing in my head between painting shapes and painting sheep. 

I'd like to revisit this one or a different sheet, but go for a larger size. 

Palette Update

This is mostly a note to myself. I changed my alternative palette. It now contains both the alternative blue and the alternative yellow.

The specific colors are located here.