What is your medium?

Sky, water, mountains, and sunset; light and shadow, reflections dancing. This acrylic painting

looks a little unfinished to me, yet I don't want to add too much. 

There, the blue cuts down on the eye-searing element.

So one of my dear friends expressed this week her frustration with painting. She has been to paint parties several times, and is not pleased with the results. It's difficult, because painting in groups is quite popular right now.  

I have several comments about this. 

This post is for all those people who would love to paint, yet, feel their tangible creations don't match their inner artist. 

1. You are too hard on yourself.  I bet your paintings are great fun. Have you looked at Van Gogh or Picasso lately? Have you perused John Singer Sargent's collection of watercolors? Expert results take decades!  Do not expect to achieve in 2 hours what the greats achieved over a lifetime. Just have fun, and don't censor the results. 

2. Allow yourself learning time.  I've made and remade many, many canvases. One reason I post my works-in-progress is that I'm an amateur painter having a great time.  I want others to enjoy their pastimes, also. Gesso is a girl's best friend. A positive goal of painting should be to grow and learn. You'll be disappointed if the goal is to make a still life painting for the living room, or paint a portrait today to give Aunt Sally.  Disclaimer here--look at this website by REAL artists: 

http://www.dailypaintworks.com/ 

These people are dedicated to their work.  You will notice, some of these you'll love, some you may regard with ambivalence. 

3. Few things can really be accomplished in 2 hours.  Can you crochet an afghan in an evening? Finish a flower bed in one morning? The parameters of painting groups make us believe a work of art can be completed within an evening's time frame. I started off in painting classes with friends, but found I needed hours or days more to get the look I wanted. This is a great way to jump-start your art adventure, but may require a good deal more of your time. I bet Nora Roberts has never finished a chapter in a day. 

4. Maybe your true medium is oil, or clay, watercolor, or something else entirely. I know you're a wonderful singer!  Why should you be so hard on yourself? Creativity dwells in everyone, but our comfort levels differ. I can't crochet precisely (as in following a pattern) to save my life. Can't arrange flowers, or grow vegetables. My daughter ices gorgeous cookies. Royal icing is apparently her true medium! 

My friend Judy, in retirement, decided to intersperse her workout sessions with art classes.  She is doing some marvelous things.  From her experience, I have hope that given time and willingness to grow, I might eventually learn to create portraits or animals. 

Painting for Auction

My friend Marissa held an auction for one of her favorite charities.  She has a way of bringing people of many talents together for good causes.  I painted this fall tree, one of my favorite subjects. It sold at a nice price, I'm happy to say. 

Another item I'm working on this week is these boats in the sunset.  The joy of a dawning day--or sinking sun, I'm not sure which--blazed across the sky. 

Hill country

In the most beautiful spot in God's green earth, I love to paint.  We also like to walk and read and cook, work on house projects, and enjoy each other.  But everywhere you look, the trees and the light are ethereal. 

Massive bald cypresses hung with Spanish moss stand sentinal along the cool rivers.  Scrubby cedar interspersed with prickly pear dots the yards and grows into woods. 

I have involved all my grandchildren in painting. They have an eye for beauty and color. 

Several of my loves in one setting! 

I continue working on deer.  Several sites offer sketching tips; I am not a great sketcher! Acrylic is a very forgiving medium. So I views some helpful links, then sketched these deer in paint.

Spring and Picasso

I

In my classroom, I arrange as much greenery and out-doorsey pictures as possible. 

There are no windows in my classroom. We have computers and desks, carpet and nicely painted walls, but no windows. So I must hang the view I want to see as I teach. My city-kid students are not accustomed to meadows and mountains, cacti, and deer. Pit bulls-- they can tell stories about those.

One of my students remembers a farm in Honduras fondly. Some have traveled widely. Others have never seen much outside of Houston. They all respond to beauty. 

I am not an art teacher.  I teach reading and do reading interventions. I also do inclusion across the curriculum for middle and high school.  

This week, my class analyzed "Bulletproof Picasso" by Train.  To understand the lyrics, we looked up Picasso paintings. These 6th graders were appalled! Their reactions to Picasso were hilarious. 

"Miss, this guy is weird!" 

Beach inspiration

I started painting this while on Spring Break.  We stayed in the Florida Keys, on Islamorada, to be precise.   It's no great secret that beautiful scenery makes plein aire painting possible!  Several issues are not immediately well-known, however. How many mosquitoes will there be?  How about wind?  Is it better to take photos and work in the comfort later? 

I usually work from photos. However, it's great fun to be someplace inspirational and capture, not just the look and the colors, but the exuberant mood, the romantic breeze, the desolate roar of the surf, the edge of the storm.

I hope you can see how the sun sizzled up. It went from cool and mysterious to bright and hot within about 15 minutes. I will never forget that sunrise!

In the same locale, I did this porch scene from a photo.  It was much more of a challenge. Architecture is not my forte. I probably need to draw the lines recommended by experts, making use of vanishing points. But, dang, that's a lot of work! 

Quad

This one went home with a friend.

Spring Bluebonnets

This painting was easy and lots of fun. As usual, I agonized over the cow. Or steer, since it has horns. Obviously, I wasn't raised on a ranch but in the hills of Pennsylvania. I find myself delighted with all the bragging rights inherent in Texas, and enchanted with the scenery.