Feeling Cheesy-Awkward

 

As I was walking through the parking lot, all prepared, with my arms full of paint and empty canvases, sporting brightly colored salmon “painting” pants and a coral pink shirt, I felt distinctively corny. What do I think I’m doing? I’m not going to be the next Vangough. Yet, here I am, committed to carrying these supplies into the studio ready to slap some cheesy landscape onto an unfortunate little piece of canvas. There I was facing several of the pre-creative process phobia’s that Twyla Tharp mentions in Chapter 2. I’m scared I’m wasting my time and being self-indulgent and that the $200 dollars I just spent on paint at Micheal’s last night will all be going to go to waste!

At the same time, the act of slapping paint onto canvas makes me feel wonderful simply because I am engaging in the act of creating. But still, the destructive little voice sneaks in “you might as well not even try because you will probably fail anyway. If you stop now, at least no one will know your bad at it.”

My five-year old daughter is amazing. When she wants to learn something she keeps doing it until she gets it and doesn’t get discouraged. Last summer, she wanted to learn how to do a cartwheel. Not only did she learn how to do one, but she even went on to learn it one handed and all in the confines of our apartment. She hurled herself into space over and over again until she was successful. Each time asking me “was that good? Was that better? Did you see that one.”

We had a great conversation at the table yesterday. She’s very good at whistling. She asked me to whistle and I did. I said “you’re a much better whistler than me Maria.” She said, “If you practiced a lot you could get it.” Then she proceeded to instruct me on her technique. “First breathe in, then whistle.” Seems simple enough, I thought that’s what I always did. But I wasn’t taking in enough air. I breathed in and then whistled. It was nice and loud. She followed up with “you should take it step by step. See, isn’t that easy!” Yep, mother’s can definitely learn from their children and that’s a beautiful thing. My five year old taught me how to whistle yesterday! But her advice was simple and relevant to my frequent self-frustrations. Just take it step by step, practice a lot and believe you can do it.

Class notes: This last class Silvia gave us some basic instructions on composition the landscape, especially how to create a Vanishing point.

• Saving a piece of your underpainting can create depth and distance.
• Triangulate a vanishing point
• Add water to your paint to create a glazed look for water or as a blending technique
• Start light then dark to create soft edges for land
• Draw stems with Burnt Sienna
• Water will reflect light and color or images from surroundings
• Use a wet sponge to take off excess paint or to add a light glaze
• Adding white to colors makes them opaque
• Keep your eye open for little magical accidents. Elements that you created or that show up by a happenstance that add dimension to  your composition.
• Look up two types of Landscape artists Melton Avery and Micheal Workman

 

I tried to follow the teachers lead and I saw behind my trees, a little cloud that reminded me of the snow-peaked mountains of Vermont. I couldn’t help but paint them in. No one was painting snow peaked mountains and I felt a little dumb when I told the teacher about the mountain I began painting and she chuckled because she just thought it was a cloud. But painting those mountains made me so happy. I remembered how mystical they would seem as the colors from the sky and the shadows of the clouds covered them and transformed them in an instant. Sure my peaks were ‘unnaturally triangular’ but that how I remembered them.

I do not love this painting in that I do not think it’s perfect but I was happy with it. There are things about it that I like and things I would like to have added or changed. At the end of a three-hour painting class, I was happy to put this aside and looking forward to beginning another one the next class, as I continue to work on basic skills.  In two classes, we will be starting larger canvases which we will work on over several class periods.

I went out to the Balcony of the inner courtyard to sneak in a sandwich during class. I was mesmerized by the bright orange Coy and then saw a baby Coy following its mother around the circular fountain. Then I realized that I had gotten locked out of the building. Luckily a classmate came by that instant and I didn’t have to bang on the door like lunatic until someone heard me. Now I know!