Category: can’t wait for summer

Cut Finger, or Not I’m Painting Today

Like I said, I have to paint whether this bandaged finger is in my way or not. Maybe it’s the summer time, but I just don’t feel like doing anything important around here. Who wants to do inside things when the weather is so nice outside?

I do have some things I need to get done, but painting has to come first. Too many days without painting, even the distraction of other creative pursuits, and I get itchy.

This is the last of the sunflower photos and I took my paints out in the garden to paint them. I decided to take a different look with this piece and try to be a little looser with it. I did draw in the composition, but tried using more brush strokes and color changes.

Maybe it works. Maybe it doesn’t. I had to stop before I made mud out of it. I thought I used a little too much water than color. Some how taking the photo of the painting is helping me to see it better. I’m pleased with what I see here rather than the actual work. Maybe it’s just me.

It’s not finished. Another session and it may be done. Now that I’ve painted I think I can go do the things I’ve been putting off. My artist brain hates to do accounting stuff.

Is Winter Over Yet?

It’s too cold out to paint the landscape. I’m just not into snow. We have had so much snow in NY so far this winter. It has to stop. Now. Man, it’s cold out.

Painting the landscape has it’s own challenges. Just leave me alone about snow. All that whiteness and sparkle is too distracting. I’m having enough distractions in real life. The weather is forecasting more snow this week. Um, no thank you, I’ll pass.

Cold weather under 32F is too cold for me. I’m the person who needs temperatures in the upper 80’s to be comfortable. And no, I don’t want to move somewhere warm. Those places have other things I like less. Florida has big bugs. California is sliding into the Pacific Ocean with every earthquake. Arizona has coyotes and gangs. I like Las Vegas, Nevada, but I’d probably lose my shirt if I lived there.

I like my New York weather. Soon enough springtime weather will be here and then we’re on our way to heat and humidity! I can’t wait.

Luckily I held on to these vestiges of summer and fall. Shells, beach pebbles, and autumn leaves. The wackiness of life, and people, and junk go to the outer edges of my thoughts when I look at these things. I can forget, for a few moments, and drift away to the last time I sat on the beach to paint the broken shells with my apple.

What’s Left of Fall (c)2011
Okay, so I’m really at the dining room table! For 20 minutes I can make believe I’m walking in the warm sun on a late September day. Twenty minutes of daydreaming can work. Another 20 and maybe I can be done with this. I wish I could be done with winter the same way.

Snow. Again.

Try as I might, I can’t keep my spirits up lately. The snow just keeps on coming down around here.  Today I had to shovel up almost three inches of the stuff.  And may I say how heavy it was?  It was really heavy and my back and shoulders ache.  So it’s exercise, I get it, but it’s enough already.  I am done.

I wanted to ignore the snow for a while by looking at some summery watercolor paintings from my garden flowers last summer.  At the time I had not yet read The Artist’s Way and was really bad at letting the household chores rule my free time.  Now that I know better, the housework was my way of blocking myself off from art, subconciously.  After doing the course I can identify my actions and try to veer towards ways of overcoming those blocks.  Now I have tools! 
The snow is my block right now.  I know I’m letting the weather block me from the studio.  All I want to do is sit and look out the window at the snow, snuggled up on my comfy little sofa with a cup of hot coffee and a lap blanket.  What studio?  What art?  Huh?  Oh, that.  Maybe later.  Maybe not. 

Those summer watercolors gave me a breath of fresh air, the feeling of stretching out and a moment to warm up and relax.  By looking over the paintings I took myself to that time of hot weather and sunshine, far from this dreary misery that is this year’s cold and snowy winter.

I remember that day well, when I walked through my house on the way to the kitchen.  Catching a glimpse out the living room windows, I noticed the really tall pink echinachea moving in the breeze along with the black-eyed Susans and the red daylilies.  Something said, “Come on outside and sit here” and I dropped everything and did just that.  The travel watercolor set was available and so was the block of paper.  I had the time and the motivation, and I vowed not to waste it.

Sitting on a chair in the garden, eye-level to the flowers made it seem like I was all alone in the world.  I sketched the scene quickly in pencil and then went straight to color.  Mindlessly, I worked purely from instinct, not thinking of which color to use next, just doing it.  I imagined this might be how Monet felt painting his garden pond and bridge in Giverney, France.  I painted the way the light fell on the petals and surfaces at the afternoon hour and the color of the deep darks in the shadows.  It felt wonderful to lose myself in that moment.

I wish I could figure out how to get myself in that moment right now.  Snow is not my friend.