Cabin Hummingbird

When I was at my friend’s cabin last year, I took a number of close-up pictures of hummingbirds. Plus, another friend took a bunch for me too. I thought hummingbirds mostly hovered whil they ate. Not the cabin humminbirds. They like to settle on a perch.

#317 - Cabin Hummingbird - 5" x 7" - paper

It could use a background, but I don’t know what will work. The cabin is in the background and it is a darker red. The black gesso is dramatic, so I left it “as is”.

This painting is small, so the the hummingbird is very small to work on. I’ve tried others in this same size and found myself trying to paint the bird. This time, I stayed focused on painting the values and value shapes.

By the way, the other orange cat showed up this morning to “help” me photograph my work. I hadn’t even straightened the painting and he appeared from nowhere. This is Hammett.  Usually, Chandler is my photography assistant. It cracks me up that I am getting a series of photos like this.

My Beauty

My beautiful Dorian Gray got painted by Kat, today. Look here to see. I love it and it captures a really fun moment. I actually balanced a ribbon on each one of the cats and snapped a picture of them two years ago. I thought it was funny. The cats did not.

Making Progress

Each day, we both make a little progress towards getting things back to normal. He has been a trooper about doing what he needs to do and he is getting more stamina each day. I am still surprised by how completely I underestimated how much time it would take to help him with the things he needs help with and keep the household running these past two weeks. I thought that last week I would have 30 - 45 minutes here and there to get a little work done. Nope for last week and barely for this week. While he is much more self-sufficient, this week there are a number of either PT/medical appointments. I am grateful to be self-employed, since I cleared my schedule this week of anything which didn’t absolutely have to be done for work.

I am getting back to painting. Not surprisingly, my focus and attention is less than stellar. For now, it’s enough to be painting, regardless of what’s coming off the paint brush. The first thing I painted with my current fuzzy brain was a lemon and the painting itself was also a lemon. Next up, I did a timed painting of a cat pitcher in my kitchen. My intention was to draw it from life, but I was fighting with the viewfinder and myself. I took the easy route and took a picture of the set up and drew from that.

I used an orange background that I painted awhile back. It probably would have been better to wait until I was in a better painting groove, but I decided that I wanted to experiment. Since this was an 8 x 10, I gave myself 25 minutes, initially. That wasn’t enough time, so I continued to work at a similar pace and stopped at 37 minutes. Most places really could use another layer of paint, especially since you can see some of the grid lines. Ugh!

#315 - Cat Pitcher - 8" x 10" paper

It’s one of those things where I can’t say that I like it, but I can say that three, two, or even one year ago I would not have been able to do this. I will repaint this in the future, since I’ve wanted to give it a try.

Next up was a 12 minute landscape. We had people coming over, so I wanted to paint, but was also rushed. It needs more contrast, better paint strokes, and so on.

#316 - Timed Landscape - 6" x 6" - paper

Since I wanted to keep up with the online class, I jumped back in with timed paintings, but it's not working for me. Since there's no reason to push myself (at least in this part of my life), I am going to either jump ahead to the next set of materials or just do a few paintings without the time pressure. 

When I Am 62

Daniel’s surgery was 7 days ago. While there is still a lot of recovery needed, I think we both turned a good corner today. One of the ways I can tell that I am starting to work down a sleep deficit rather than building it up. Another is that there is the tiniest bit of room for ideas and thoughts which have nothing to do with hip replacement surgery.

We still get a newspaper delivered to our home and I like to read each day’s newspaper. If I get behind, I don’t read it as thoroughly, but I still look at it. Today, I started looking at Sunday’s paper. In either Friday’s or Saturday’s paper, there was a sidebar which mentioned this program. Apparently in Minnesota, you can take college courses for $10 per credit at state-supported institutions of higher education starting when you are 62. I have a ways to go, but it’s pretty cool to think that I can take some art classes at a junior college or a university in my future!

I am getting behind in Kat’s online class, but that is not a problem since it’s online and work at your own pace. I wanted to try and keep painting, but knew that I wouldn’t be able to every day and wouldn’t much time on the days I did paint. Is that an understatement. On my most exhausted days, I haven’t painted at all. On the other days, I have done one 10-minute lime painting. For this set, I did the first one (upper left) on 3/11 and the last one on 3/18. For the two bottom ones, I was just plain stubborn and painted, even though I was pretty beat. I skipped yesterday and probably will today. Tomorrow, I hope to be in a place where I can do at least one 10-minute painting per day or most days.

#313 - Limes - 8" x 8" - paper

The first one was painted with my old lighting scheme. I really like the bounced, lower light and feel like it’s helping me not mute my paint colors so much for the other 3 paintings.

One other thing I should mention about all of this surgery recovery stuff is that it really helps to have good family and friends. Both Daniel and I are really blessed. 

Caretaker Mode

I am in full caretaker mode. My hubby had hip replacement surgery on Thursday.  While it is especially important to take care of him, I am also working to take care of me and the felines too.

That meant on Tuesday, I treated myself and took a 3 hour class at Wet Paint called “The Science of Seeing”. It was taught by Suzann Beck. I wish I had more time and energy to write about it, but I don’t. Since I took a lot of notes, I am hoping to remember most of it when I refer back to them. Two takeaways which I will briefly mention is that she talked about and showed us the impact from everyone having a dominant eye, similar to being right-handed or left-handed, and why it is important to back up and look at your painting from time to time. She also mentioned painting in less light, rather than more, if possible.

The other thing is that I changed my lighting in my basement painting “studio”. Daniel helped me put up the white shower board the day before his surgery. I had changed my set up and had taken the board down awhile back. More important, I changed the bulbs to the equivalent of 40 watt bulbs. I am bouncing the light off the white board, so I am back to having almost no shadows.  Hurrah! I feel like I can “see” things better in a slightly lower light level. Plus, when I throw light on an object, I think it will be easier to see differences in values. I’ve noticed that I tend to dull/gray up my colors too much and I’m wondering if that was a by-product of too much or too harsh lighting. I’ve only done one 10-minute lime painting since my lighting changed, so we will see!

I am hopeful that I will get at least one 10-minute painting done before I go to bed tonight. Plus, I might read some of the newspaper.

Blimey, It’s A Limey

Monday night after juggling, I really, really, really needed to paint. My head was buzzing and I thought that a 10-minute painting would be a good way to chill.

It was. Plus, I liked the end result.

Orange You Glad To See Me?

For my online painting class with Kat, it’s timed painting week. In the past in the classes I’ve taken in person, that’s meant doing a simple 10-minute painting. The official homework goes beyond that, but I kind of need the simple 10 minute paintings this week. For a warm up, I did 4 of them yesterday in one session. Usually, I hit my stride at about #3. Not yesterday! I completely lost my focus on #2 and #3, plus I had too much moisture in my palette for #2. It’s been challenging keeping a decent moisture level. The basement is cold, so I run a space heater in my painting area. That really dries things out!

I took a picture after I had worked on each one for 10 minutes. At the 10 minute mark, I like the first one the best, except for the background stroke on the right hand side which is really distracting.

For all of them, I did a little additional work, although I gave up on #2 and #3. I like where I ended up with #4, which is the lower left-hand corner.

#312 - 10 minute paintings - 8" x 8" - paper