Painting color drenched artworks of places and things I love
A little while ago I was hunting for a painting subject and decided to revisit this scene I have painted a couple of times before. This pond garden was such a serene spot when I visited Clark Botanical Garden in my area and I enjoy looking at it.
Here it is in watercolor once again. I tried to leave more white space and introduce some brighter colors this time around.
Twenty minutes of work to keep it light, fresh and to enjoy the process.
Mr. Resistance is quite a character. Over the time I’ve been studying about him I’ve gained somewhat of a respect for his talent and ability to totally screw up my daily agenda.
I still hate him, but I know he’s there, and what he’s capable of doing to me.
Fine.
However, since I’ve been following Steven Pressfield’s thought process on Resistance, I’ve become enamored of his idea of the Muse. You know, you’ve got to have good and evil, yin and yang, the Good Witch or the Bad Witch.
Mr. Resistance’s other half is this kind of entity.
In Pressfield’s imagination the Muse flies around in her little plane thingy. As she flies by she checks to see if the good little artist is at her easel. If not, she whizzes away. She’ll try again the next day. Not there? Okay, she’s gone again. Stay out of the loop enough times and she doesn’t bother coming back.
The Muse is totally not like Mr. Resistance, who never leaves. Please, leave.
Turning a corner on that creep I showed up at the easel. Low and behold there was the Muse, hovering over head. I sorted through my idea pile, got out the large watercolor block and just started in on this new work.
Twenty minutes in, I stopped to let the paint dry, and a little bit later I tried working in more color to define the shapes and shadows.
I wasn’t so sure I wanted to do this painting, but so what? May as well catch the Muse as she flies by and drops some fairy dust on my scattered brain making the most of the process.
If the magic is in the doing I better make sure I am at the ready and working. I know all along that it’s in the process, not the outcome, where things keep moving.
The 30 in 30 Challenge is over. There was that possibility of success, of hitting 30 paintings in 30 days. Negative view: it didn’t happen. Positive view: something happened. Not a lot, but enough.
In the spirit of the positive view, I carry on in the process.
The weather being really wonderful for an October in New York, I took myself on an Artist’s Date to Clark Botanical Garden in Albertson, NY on Long Island. It’s not the beach, but it’s near my house, easy to get to, beautiful, and quiet.
Thinking positive, I planned to do some watercolor sketching so I toted my equipment with me. I couldn’t decide which paper to carry along, the Canson notebook or the Arches block. I brought both. They’re small enough and I wasn’t carrying a beach chair and lunch. That decision was a good one because I learned something about each type of paper.
As I sketched on the Canson above, I noticed I couldn’t rework already painted areas, which began to run. Looks like Canson paper is only good for really fast work with no going back.
Below is the Arches block. I could continue working and adding paint without having issues like the Canson notebook. The only draw back with a block is if I wanted to do another sketch I needed to free this one from the block with a palette knife. That means it had to be dry to remove causing wait time.
The two works have a different feeling with each type of watercolor paper.
Working en plein air was a good experience and exercise, too. Out in nature, it takes time to adjust to seeing shapes, shadows, highlights, colors, and sorting all that information onto a 2 dimensional surface.
Let me tell you, it was hard work. The process doesn’t lie. It knows the work is hard, but doing it has rewards.
Challenges, being what they may, are quite possibly not my bag, as it seems. In my very heart of hearts I thought I could be one of those people who thrive on just such a thing. You know, those special kind of individuals who need to one-up the next guy, break out of the pack, be numero uno, go for the gold!
It’s an admirable quality, I thought, one which I might try to muster up inside myself to push harder to achieve some artistic movement toward an end.
Hello. It’s just not happening over here. Not happening.
The 30 in 30 Challenge I signed up for is not living up to my very lofty expectations. Ahem.
Might I say, without any anxiety on my part, that this is Day 16 in the challenge and the most I’ve painted is…SIX!
And you can ask me if I care. I don’t care at all. The thing is this-I should care! I signed up! I added my blog, my name, and one painting, and I should really care how it looks to the crowd of artists who number over 400 in this event and are fully participating. But I don’t feel any remorse at all.
I look at it this way:
I win anyway.
Developing a new website is a big deal. If this WordPress thing doesn’t kill me now, nothing will. And for that I’ll be grateful. In the midst of my mess here, figuratively and physically, painting happened. Imagine that? Actual work took place at my studio table. A day of productivity is a welcome thing. Needed, and necessary.
Putting aside resistance, trying to keep myself in the now instead of thinking about what I should’ve done, and what I could do tomorrow, the moment came. I grabbed it with both hands. The paints were available. The watercolor block was on my table. Photos I took in the fall were strewn across my table too. All I needed was to feel a pull toward one of them. Motivation is such a difficult thing to capture and the brain is a strange friend.
My brain talks way too much, and says things to me that I wouldn’t say to my worst enemies. Why do we do that to ourselves? The brain goes on and on about hurtful thoughts, talking such trash. And we listen to it, ingest and digest it, and spit it back out by doing absolutely nothing.
Someone come and kick it out! Guess what? That someone has to be one’s self. Get with the program, already!
Enough with the trash talk, let’s get to the art.
In the next photo you can see how I started adding shadow and trying to define the areas. The last photo is the second day of working on this watercolor painting and it’s starting to look like something I could be pleased with.
You may or may not remember, but it’s the process that is really the focus. Kicking out Mr. Resistance is part of the gig. Returning to the painting is the second part. Resistance has to be toppled to make time for the work. But, and the but is a big one, then I have to get back to work. It’s such a long story.
