m. p i l g r i m (art)

i took a lot of time off this year to focus on self care and figure out what i wanted to do about work. i currently work in a hospital and it is amazingly stressful these days.  in September, i scribbled these in the "notes" section of my organizer/planner.  

College painting has assignments that we do.  At first, I was concerned about what seemed to be a lack of objective. But then I finally figured out, maybe I don't need to know what the objective is. just paint. I've learned how to build canvas stretcher bars and stretch my own canvas, which  my first assignment  is being painted on. The second assignment is to mix 100 colors on paper that I gessoed.  I didn't know you could gesso paper and paint on it, so--cool!  I couldn't be less interested in this assignment, but I have learned a lot about certain pigments, namely how freaking strong they are, like viridian, and some of the reds. The 3rd assignment involves building a cradled board and either copying a famous painting, or copying a famous painter's  style.   I chose Monet.  Because I thought it would be "easy".  :-( To explain my subject I would need to tell you that my husband is a gardener. He loves it.  He loves colo...

The final painting So, I started College Painting I.  It is a requirement in nearly every drawing or painting class that at some point you create a composition out of an assemblage of random art objects and render it.  So here we are. Assignment 1: Paint a still life from a set up in the room, in black and white and shades of grey.  Using Titanium White and Ivory Black.  I cheated a little - I'm sure earlier art students had to figure out the values in gray by eye-balling the set up, but not me.  I have an iPhone.  So, I angled the set up that I wanted, and took a picture, using the phone to change it to b&w. It turns out that there is another good reason to take a picture, that being that people are just RUDE.  Within an hour of sketching out my picture, people had started coming up and moving things, adding things, taking other things away.  Before the end of class, it looked like this.   And an hour later, ...

I took private lessons this past spring from a local artist, Tom Blazier.  I envied so the taboret that he had in his studio, and so I set about getting one for myself.  After looking at some of the fancy ones online ($$$) I started googling "cabinets with drawers" and the like. Finally, I found this  on Amazon  and I couldn't be more pleased.  You have to assemble itself but it's totally worth it, and not difficult at all.  Solid wood. These are nice flat drawers that have paints in some, brushes in others, and a spare palette. ...

Almost done. As a wanna-be oil landscape artist, I imagine I'll have all number of pretty landscape pictures.  Some I may even do more than once.  I tend to like single-word names because I like to challenge myself.  But ultimately, I may just name my paintings by numbers. Anyway.  I take lots of pictures of pretty views.  Seeing pretty views is one thing.  Seeing one that's worthy of a composition and some paint is a whole other thing. My first finished painting will be from a photograph I took from near the northern end of the Black Canyon trail in Arizona.  I was attempting a 60K for the third time on this trail, and for the 2nd time I was coming off an illness.  I did not finish.  Once I realized I wasn't going to finish, I simply relaxed and took some pictures.  This is one of them.   I started out by toning my canvas, and I think this may be the secret for me.   I love the way the color peeks...

I had decided to take a year off art school because I'd been under so much stress, and had so many health issues.  However, I'm feeling GREAT these days--I've had some changes occur in my life that have simultaneously relieved my stress and energized me.  But how to get my mojo back? First, I looked online for some sources, searching under "art and drawing prompts" to get me back into the flow of creating, and I found this: I'm pretty excited, in particular, with this  course for beginning .  I put together my beginning kit:  In case you're wondering what's in there other than the immediately visible, it contains the usual drawing supplies (conte pencils, art gum, prismacolor ebony drawing pencils, sharpener, chamois, micro pens) along with: Derwent watercolor pencils Couple tubes of Liquitex heavy body spray bottle glue stick W&N water colour markers scissors, xacto knife, razor several water brush pens metal French curve, eraser...

I have to say it's exciting learning that you're wrong, especially when 'wrong' refers to completely skipping over something because you might not enjoy it.  For me, that's like oil painting.  After listening to me kvetch about how I never have time to attend classes, and knowing that I want to be a landscape artist, husband found one to mentor me.  Technically speaking, he's actually teaching me since I've never had a class in beginning painting.   And.  he's an  oil painter. I had, early on, discounted the idea of oil painting, assuming that it was 1) messy, 2) would trigger huge asthma attacks, 3) was messy, and 4) I can't paint wet-on-wet.   I'm amazed to find that it's not smelly, especially since there's something called "odorless paint thinner," and since I wear gloves and a smock, it's not messy at all.  In face, it's easier to clean up because it doesn't dry in 30 seconds, like acrylics, ruinin...