Just a Tad

Flowers and More

The shock of this one is that I'm fine with it. I don't have a painting comfort zone. But, once I find one, I'm convinced subject matter like this will be far outside of it. But I'm shocked to say that I'm okay with it. I stopped beating myself up over every color choice. I realized that I was painting from a photo I printed out, from an image on my screen, watching lessons with color shifts from a digital camera. I can only try painting what I see and not worry about matching the painting in the course. Still a goal, but no point in reworking tones to death in search of an exact match.

Meanwhile, I had I trip up to central California, and practiced looking at colors and mentally translating them to pigment blends. Of course, I won't know if I'm on the right track until I try painting some of what I saw. One more painting to go in the course!

 

Plugging Away

This is the penultimate painting of this course. It's not just flowers but a selection of objects topped off with a painting of a bird on the vase. Clearly, subject matter aimed at turning my self esteem to mush. I would love to try out what I've learned on some original paintings. In fact, I won't be able to internalize the lessons of color mixing and such until I do. In fact, one could argue that it would serve to further my education to do exactly that.

And that's the seductive whirlpool, the gouache-laden Charybdis, luring me in until there is no escape. I would  cease learning by doing what's hard and coast through by doing what I deem easier. If there's no challenge, especially when I'm out on my own, I could easily reach the point of asking, "What the hell am I doing this for?"

James Gurney adds some fun/challenge to his painting sketchbooks by changing up his colors. Often he limits the number of paints on his palette which eliminates the easy choices. How do you paint a green tree if there's no green? And no pure yellow, just Yellow Ochre? And no blue, just some Ivory Black? That's when you see how the perception of a color depends on the colors around it. You end up looking at a picture of a "green" tree that seems perfectly natural, and yet it's not really green.

So, I must finish! As always, there's a lot going on. I finished a Tshirt design for a con. I still need to design a statue and, of course, draw lots of heroic ducks and rodents for cons in April and May. But I have to finish the course because, as I whine and suffer, I continue to learn.  And that's the point of this whole thing!

                                                                                                        -- Tad