I guess this is my favorite painting from my class at Cloudcroft. It's not finished as the mountains in the background need work. This lesson was about foregrounds, however. We enjoyed layering the grasses, using masking fluid, throwing splatters, making our own stamps, making scratches with sticks dipped in paint. These ideas will be old stuff to veteran painters but for me and most of the class they are now wonderful tools to add to our repertoire.
She (Cathy Lubke) also taught us about skies.
Every one's was different as we all had different reference photos for adobes.
This is my red sunset.
This is my storm sky. I learned about painting shapes instead of details. She caught me very carefully trying to paint the branches of the trees, and yelped, and showed me how to put in shapes first and then detail. That's how green I am.
This was to be abstract of an aspen tree grove. I failed this lesson miserably. But will keep this around and see what I can do with it later as I learn more.
We learned to negative paint in flowers in a black background.
As you can see we got a lot of finished work done in the class. I like my paintings but honestly, I've seen a hundred of these types of watercolors. I long to do something different... something more edgy, fresh, not like your grandmother's watercolors. Yet, I have to learn the basics and have hundreds of paintings to go before I can find my "style". I get impatient with the process, because my mind's eye sees a finished product that I don't have the skill to achieve. But i must close the gap as Ira Glass says between my taste for art and my skill level. I can only do that with a lot of practice and dedication.
It's not easy to learn new things at my age. ........ I hope I live long enough to see the painting in my mind's eye.
5 comments:
Oh, you're quoting Ira Glass. How wonderful.
Please don't be too hard on yourself. Impatience is normal, but you can choose to let it motivate you or frustrate you. Maybe you can mix things up--keep learning the basic techniques but every once in while indulge in something closer to what you want to do. And someday it will just click. I'm sure of it. That doesn't mean that you'll always produce exactly what you want from then on, but at least you'll start to have more satisfaction in the work.
Have you ever read the novel My Name is Asher Lev? If not, I realy, really recommend it.
Peggy!!! your work that you've done is amazing!! Just think about it, before the workshop you would have straggled so much and now...you can do it and you know how to! I am soooo jealous now!!!
Oh well, we all have our own ways to learn...
Keep practicing (that's what I keep on saying to myself...) and one day...:)))
Oh, these are all very lovely.....to my art-untrained-eyes, that is! I like the grasses in the foreground on the first one, and the trees don't look like a failure to me!!
It appears your water-color abilities are off and running very nicely!
There's an award waiting for you here:
http://midlifebyfarmlight.blogspot.com/2008/07/awesome-thinking-awards.html
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God's blessings on your day!
Very nice! I really like the sheep painting. I have a thing about sheep paintings (here is a post about my own recent sheep painting ). They haunt me, so they're not so entirely my friends (I have them hanging in my office at work, along with "The Wave," to teach me a lesson), but I love your painting of them.
I am inspired by your desire to break out and do your own watercolor thing - something uniquely yours. I'm pursuing that, too - and it's amazingly hard to let go - to not paint those tree branch details against the sky before you should - to still think you need a sky in your paintings - to still... whatever. I want to REALLY step out and do something totally unpredictable and wild.
But maybe that wouldn't be me, either...
It's a journey, and I enjoyed seeing yours in this post.
Thanks!!
I adore your sheep too !! they are my most favorite painting of the bunch here...would love to hear about your classes, if you feel up for sharing..
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