I Am This Woman

Blogging has been difficult since returning from Africa. Family obligations, house cleaning and job hunting have taken precedence. However, I have to report on the painting class because so many interesting discoveries are being made.

First of all, if you are going to take a class, make sure it is in an environment that is completely comfortable to you. Check out the instructor and the studio where you will be working. This makes all the difference to me.

I’m taking a class at the community college, but it is a for-credit “concurrent” class. This means that I get a grade but I’m signed up for the non-degree seeking track. There are degree seekers, pre-four-year-college goers in our midst, and they must follow the curriculum objectives. This translates to mini-lectures and attention to serious, “real” design (color, line, composition, balance) as well as traditional techniques. It is not the place for someone who wants to learn how to paint “just like __________.” There are books and videos for that, and also specialty classes offered in other places.

The college classroom is a place I am very comfortable in, where I feel like I belong. I LOVE the studio where we are. It looks out onto the little pond in the middle of campus, there is tons of natural light and there are tons of resources including computers with Photoshop, an opaque projector and several mini-galleries of works in progress. For me, it oozes creativity, process and dialogue.

The students range from 19 to 75 (perhaps older, it’s hard to tell), and there are a number of accomplished retired folks who “have always wanted to paint.” A number of them (I think the unit of measure is “gaggle”) have signed up for the concurrent class for several semesters because it’s a great place to paint and mingle with other dabblers. They are a bit noisy, as gaggles usually are, but they bring their own coffee to share in the Mr. Coffee and someone brought donut holes yesterday. SCORE!

Where else can you get such a lively and interesting studio for about $25 a month?

The first class saw me shaking in my boots a little bit because after a brief intro, the younger instructor said, “we’re going to draw so take a lunch break, go to the store and get a sketch pad and charcoal.” I blanched. I did not sign up to draw, I signed up for painting. Valiantly, I ran to Michael’s and got the stuff, and went back and pretended to be happy about drawing the wine bottle, box and picture frame still life he had set up.

My perfectionism goes completely off the charts when it comes to drawing…. I am so unhappy with how I draw, what I draw and what it ends up looking like. So I kinda plotzed, and had to go stand in the hallway, where the other instructor was showing a Helen Van Wyk video. He talked me down a little, and said, that the course afforded one access to either instructor and either studio OR BOTH. Score. And also that the first day is when people usually say to themselves, “THIS ISN’T WHAT I SIGNED UP FOR.” Ha. Lolz.

He and I discussed painting, and in the course of that first day, I realized that I do have an aesthetic and a plan for how I want to proceed. I am not a complete and total amateur, having done photography for these past years and having quite an extensive art appreciation “vocabulary.”

I didn’t go back into the drawing session until they were done, and the instructor was doing a portrait painting demo. I realized that I needed to just slap paint on canvas and figure out what paint does and how to manipulate it. And so that’s what I’m doing, and it might take me 20 years to get it right (as long as I paint a lot). Later, my artsy sister-in-law saw my sketches and said, “ahem, you DO know how to draw, so maybe you just don’t like drawing?” Bingo.

I found a good place online to buy materials, and oils are about as cheap as acrylic these days (for the good acrylics - NOT craft paint). Blick Art Materials or Jerry’s Artarama are both good. Michael’s is a good “go-to” place for bits and pieces, but they, like Jo Ann Crafts, have a limited range of materials. And for what they charge for things like mineral spirits and linseed oil, I could take a family of four out to dinner (at my fave Mexican restaurant), so I got those things at the hardware store. I bought a tackle/tool box from Homeless Depot (I usually call it either that or Home Despot) to put everything in, and included Carmex, ibuprofin and masking tape in my tool kit. And now, it’s off to the races!

In upcoming entries, I will try to hit on some of the discoveries I’m making as I paint. But for now, one of the discoveries is I love it so much, that I don’t notice the pain in my legs and back until I have put away everything for the day. Then WHAMMO! I painted for about 10 hours yesterday, finished one little still life of some bell peppers (which is awesome in many ways and also sucks in many ways), but then the truck hit me. I had to take a hot bath and hit the sack by 10pm. Next time, focus on ergonomics as much as light and shadow.

ps I painted from a photo I’d taken, which made it so that I don’t REALLY have to draw. (Explanation of that later.)