Tagged: art class

Jun 22

Betty

I love Tuesdays and it’s all because of Betty.  On Tuesdays, I get to leave my messy house with dishes that need washing and floors that need cleaning for a few hours and get together with my artist-friends and look at what they’re painting, talk about what I’m painting, talk about whatever is going on – we talk about a lot of things while we’re working.  We drink coffee and share cookbooks and art books and useful websites with each other, or whatever.  We’ve been known to paint to live music from time to time, since my husband and a couple of the other artists tend to go out and play gigs together here and there.  It’s really like an open studio, jam session, art hang-out sometimes.

The art class was begun by an elderly lady in our church named Betty Cumberland.  We all owe so much to Betty for getting us started with our paintbrushes and oil paints!  She has literally taken hold of a hand or two and dabbed the first bit of paint onto that first blank canvas for some of us.  Always the encourager, she would point out mistakes and give gentle direction without ever coming across in a negative way.  She painted right along with the rest of us, asking for our critique of her work, as well.

Our beautiful art teacher passed away last Sunday morning.  My life would not be what it is if Betty had not touched it.  I am so thankful that she took the time to share her gifts with all of us.  She has helped me to grow, to stretch my imagination, to think about what I see.  She has been a wonderful example to me of an honest, solid, Godly woman.  She spoke gently and with humor and fought like a mama bear for her kids, when she needed to.  We will miss her greatly.

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Jun 22

On vacation in “Art-land”

Yesterday was SUCH a busy day!  I was late getting to art class and then I was on a roll, so I was late getting OUT of art class!  My wonderful husband saw how focused I was on the painting and took time out of his busy schedule to mix up some bread dough and get the kids working on cleaning up the house and making lunch.  He was very gracious about it.

So, while I was on vacation in “Art-land” forgetting about all of the zillions of things that really needed to be getting accomplished, I painted a nice little ACEO of our sailboat, the Dulcinea, as a study for my next painting.  This is a lousy cell-phone pic of it, but it gives you a basic idea of the painting.

I made a lot of progress on the Twin Rocks painting, too.  Then it was time to get back to reality.  Kids, dishes, cooking, baking, more dishes…  Check the WIP page to see the stages Twin Rocks has gone through and then let me know what you think!

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Jun 14

Sick day – and time to wait and see what happens.

I’m not sick, but my three youngest children are.  Elena, who is five, slept on the couch last night so we could hear her if she needed anything during the night.  She was still a little feverish this morning, drank some tea, ate breakfast and commenced to bouncing around the house as usual.  Joy, who is three, slept through church on Sunday, coughed a bit and just kept right on going.  Justin, who is just barely three months old, is not taking the whole fever and stuffy head nearly so well.

All of this boils down to the fact that I am not getting any painting done today.  I really believe that everything happens for a reason.  I know what I need to do next with my seascape, but it will have to wait.  In the meantime, I will cuddle my uncomfortable baby and try to sooth him until his little head clears up.  I might do a little sketching while he is sleeping on my shoulder.  My daughter wants me to try some fantasy style paintings with fairies and dragons.  Anyway, the painting will still be there next week and who knows, I might have a flash of inspiration between now and then that will take the painting to a higher level than I would have taken it today.  I’ll just have to wait and see.

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Jun 07

Change of direction

I had a wonderful week!  Family visiting from Hawaii, some sunshine, a trip to the coast – it was great!  While we were at the coast visiting the Tillamook Cheese Factory, we slid up north a little way and dibbled our toes in the water at Rockaway Beach, which just happens to be the site of the painting I’m currently working on.

Oh, my. I almost cried when I realized how far off I was on the scale in my painting. Those rocks are HUGE! I knew I had to do something. So, with a little fear and trembling, I started slapping paint over what had been some of my favorite areas of the canvas. Away went the sand, the foam at the edge of the surf and the pretty reflections of the rocks. The tide was coming in!

After a moment of adjustment, I took a long look at what I had done and began to see some potential for improvement. It was quite a surprise! The kind of surprise that you want to see after taking a leap of faith. There was what could be made into a higher point of ground in the right corner with some beach grass waving in the ocean breeze. That turned out to be just what I needed to add another layer of distance to the painting, effectively pulling the rocks back farther and simultaneously increasing their height.

I still need to fine-tune the waves, but here is what I have so far:

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Mar 02

Little things

…and big things. 

Like teeny-tiny art card (2-1/2 x 3-1/2″) paintings and huge empty canvases, itty-bitty pre-born babies and my massive belly.  Baby is due in April, so I’m definitely feeling massive right now.  There’s a masterpiece in the works but I can’t see it yet, although I can certainly feel it.

I’ve been working in miniature lately, as far as art goes.  The ACEO (Art Cards Editions and Originals) format has been a lot of fun to play with.  It’s been a bit of a challenge to adjust to working so small.  I shouldn’t have been suprised by that, but I was a little.

I did a couple abstracts on the Mama/Baby theme first.  I’ve never really tried anything abstract before, so that may have made it even more difficult than it had to be.  Then I did a very simple landscape dominated by a mountain in the background.  It reminds me of a Bob Ross-style painting.  My latest, and perhaps my favorite so far, is a portrait of a horse.  This is a photo of my sketch for that one.  It interests me.  A teeny-tiny painting of a very large horse – at least, he has a massive, very solid feeling to me.  I hope you like it as much as I do.

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Aug 11

It won’t be left unpainted

I recently acquired a large number of 5×7″ canvases and they have really suprised me.  I picked one up just to play around with it a few weeks ago and ended up painting the Winter Leaf painting that I signed last week.  It was a nice break from the Creek painting (the one with the sandals in it) and I finished both paintings the same day.

I was thinking I’d paint a series of leaves, since I had all those matching canvases, but somehow today the leaves weren’t exactly inspiring me.  I started flipping through some photos I took yesterday strolling through a beautiful rose garden with some friends of mine and decided to paint one of them.  Actually, I’d been thinking about painting this one since the moment I pushed the button to take the picture, so I didn’t have much choice, I had to paint it.

Sometimes paintings are like that, they just won’t be left unpainted.  Is that obsessive or is it just focused?  Whatever you call it, it is necessary for the creative process.  Most people have no idea how much energy, concentration and sometimes absent-minded distraction is involved in creating a work of art.  Constant problem solving has to happen.  It isn’t easy to create the illusion of three-dimensional objects on a two-dimensional surface.  That’s what painting is all about.

One of the amazing things, to me, is that it doesn’t matter what size the canvas, we can be drawn into a good painting - completely absorbed by the image on it.  A smaller painting may get finished sooner, but it isn’t necessarily any easier or less gripping than a really huge painting.  There are challenges to any painting!  Each size, each subject, each style, palette and approach carry with them problems that must be solved in order for the painting to really work.  Sometimes they just won’t let you go.  My hope is that the finished painting will have the same affect on the viewer that it has on the artist.  That feeling that you just don’t want to stop looking at it because there’s so much there to see.

I could ramble for a long time and I’m not sure if I could really adequately put this intensity into words, so I’ll stop writing for now and hope that you understand at least some small part of what I’m trying to express.  A lot of me goes into a painting.  Maybe that’s all that needs to be said.

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Aug 03

Finishing

Today is a momentous occasion!  First of all, it’s my eldest child’s birthday, which means I have been parenting for two decades, now.  Am I finished?  Not on your life.  Not only because she has 6 younger sisters and a younger brother but because as long as I am still breathing, I will continue to pray for her.  I will pray that the Lord blesses her inasmuch as she seeks to follow Him and that He will protect her from her own foolishness as He protected me from mine when I was her age.

The other reason for marking this day on my calendar is that I actually signed, thereby declaring completion of not one but TWO paintings today!  There is photographic evidence on my Works in Progress page.  I have been working on both of these paintings for a while, the creek painting was started first and then the leaf was kind of an interlude.  It’s interesting that they both came together on the same day.

I don’t have any great philosophical insights today about finishing things, but I do have a very large painting hanging on my wall that I just quit working on.  I gave up.  I couldn’t decide if it was really finished, so I never signed it.  Someday I will take it down and call it done, sign my name with a flourish and put all of the mental energy that it carries away from me.  Then I will be able to truly enjoy it.

Have you ever noticed how much energy an unfinished project carries?  It must because the relief that comes with the signature, or whatever marks a project as complete, is so intense!  You can breathe more freely, you can think more clearly, there is less clutter inside your head.

I should finish projects more often.

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Jul 27

My Sandals

I’ve been so busy lately trying to set up a shop on Etsy (http://etsy.com/shop/wendelika), get stuff together for the Colton Farmer’s and Crafter’s Market (www.coltonfarmersmarket.org) and reconfigure my web site that I haven’t had much time or energy to focus on painting.  Even today, sitting in front of my canvas, I had a hard time settling down to paint but I was determined to put something new on that canvas.

I’ve been trying to bring myself to paint in my old worn-out sandals on one of the rocks.  I sketched them, sitting out in the backyard in the sunshine, paying careful attention to the patterns of light and shadow falling on the footbeds.  Then I went back to my canvas – and painted moss on the tree branches.  I told myself and everyone else that I couldn’t decide where to put the sandals.  That evening, a friend of mine was loking at my painting and remarked that they should go riiiiiiiiiiiight there (pointing to the centermost rock).  I had an ah-ha moment!  He was right.  That rock is as far as you can go there without taking off your shoes, because you’re going to get wet if you go any farther.

So, what’s the big deal about the sandals?  I’ve had this idea stuck in my head lately, that shoes are a symbol of the all the stress, all the worry, all the messy stuff of this world that we try to stay out of but sometimes sticks to us anyway.  And there are times when we’re in the presence of God and we need to put aside all of that stuff, all of that worry and hassle that would keep our focus away from those things that are holy and good and pure and lovely.

There are times when we need to focus on God.

It’s nice to have a retreat, get away from everything and have a quiet break from the stuff of everyday life, but I very rarely get that.  I can, however, take off my shoes.  Wherever I am, whatever is going on around me, I am trying to remember to take a moment when I need it, take off my shoes, feel the refreshing coolness of air on my feet and know that wherever I am, God is here with me and the place where I’m standing is holy ground.

So, I have left my sandals on this canvas, off my feet.  It is refreshing.

There are more photos of this painting as I have worked on it on my Works in Progress page.

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