“There is no wrong way? Well, there is.”

And there I was, sunlight streaming in through the shutters shedding light on the natural wood floor sprinkled with old paint, waiting anxiously for the teacher to arrive. But the teacher wouldn’t arrive. Five minutes late, 15 minutes late, 28 minutes late and the clock ticked on. Meanwhile, my ten or so classmates almost entirely made up of lovely middle aged women, didn’t talk about the gleaning delay of the teacher.

 

I was feeling confused. Finally, like the Cat in the Hat, she popped in with her luggage and bags and complained about the traffic. Her tardiness made for quite the dramatic entrance. Then she wasted no time, quickly divulged her knowledge and love of Landscape Painting.

• You should paint starting from bigger brushes moving to smaller brushes
• Your brush should move in the direction you landscape elements are moving
• The picture should have a foreground, middle ground and a background
• Know your perspective
• Underpainting or orange or Burnt sienna with a sponge application leaving some areas white increases a paintings depth and character
• Tape the edges of your canvas before you paint to keep it clean
• Start with light colors and add on the darker ones
• More layers the more interesting
• Use multiple canvases at a time to leave time to dry and gain perspective
• Trees are big clouds with sticks on the end of them
• Stroke up for trees then lilt twist and roll with a Philbert brush
• Add sugar to your paint to decrease drying time (her own invention)

 

Some students received her email with the class list, the rest of us did not and we had to hustle for supplies from the teacher and fellow classmates. This made for a very uncomfortable beginning and because of my hustling, I took my first misstep that launched me into failure. I left the room for some water and came back to the table where a few ladies were attempting to paint along with the teacher so I did the same.  When we were done trying to copy her, she tells us that we weren’t supposed to be doing that.

She was teaching us how to make a gradiant sky and gave instructions on to which blue goes first and so on and how to blend them.

1. Sky blue
2. Cerelian
3. Thalo
4. Cobalt
5. Ultra Marine

 

An empty canvas. The promise of something great!

Right before the teacher scraped all the paint off of the canvas!

 

At one point, the instructor overheard a student say “see, there is no wrong way?” She responded under her breath “There is no wrong way? Well, there is!” The teacher, Sylvia, was not letting it go. She wanted us to keep going until we got it. And many people did. But for me, that meant multiple painting overs of one little canvas. And in the end, my canvas was too wet to make these attempts. I felt really discouraged and frustrated. I literally wanted to quit! I thought I would feel a little successful at the end of this class or uplifted. I  just felt crushed a bit. When the creative process spits me back out, it’s hard for me to get back inside and work at it. I feel like, that’s it, I tried and I’m bad. Now I will dust this studio off my pants and find one that suits me more. But I can’t do that right now. Ugh.

Here is the final instruction piece. We watched the teacher and struggled to follow her. I never even got to the clouds! I’m looking forward to learning from her. She knows her stuff and if I really focus and don’t allow myself to get discouraged, I know I will get better. My lessons from today were; slow down, follow instructions, think before you paint and be prepared with my own materials next class.