Ah Yes, The Paint Class

I knew when I took this class that sketching and painting, collage even, is not my strong suit.  Now, I'm more certain than ever.  This has not deterred me from giving it a go.  I am learning more about my expectations of my students and how it feels to be on the other side of the art lesson, which is a very good thing.  So, for the curious, I'll talk a moment here about my homework and what I feel I'm learning.
First of all, this has really made me think of all the art lessons we do with kidlets that aren't really art at all but cut and paste. You know, the apple must be red, sky blue, etc.  I'm discovering I much more enjoy open ended assignments.
So after the lead artist sharing and encouraging us to set up our inspiration board and supplies, we were to jump into our sketch books and just do something with some sort of color pattern in mind.  I had dried some sunflower petals and they are glorious in the garden, so my mind was there.  In addition, we were supposed to include a quote of some kind. That's about all there was to the directions.
If you are looking for some rhyme or reason, let me help you out, as this is very busy.  I just emptied the flower press of all it's petals and set about to just play with a variety of materials, using those petals. As is abundantly clear, I just plopped things down as the spirit moved me, but it did give me ideas and an opportunity to use ribbon, beads, colored pens and pencils, textured and printed papers of various sorts. You will notice I steered clear of paints, with exception to the flowers I painted the other day with Miss Bugg, and cut out. The Inspiration  Fairy was my favorite and I loved the quotes. If you want to read the quotes, but can't see them, I think if you click on the picture, it will show up bigger.



Our next assignment was to take the prompt from our goody bag and make something happen with it.
My prompt was "bubble gum pink, seaside, lines and dots, joy."  This part of this class is far more interesting to my nerdy brain than the actual work. I simply could not reconcile bubble gum pink, seaside and joy. Why?  I've been studying on that and I think it is because I just don't like bubble gum pink and I didn't want to.  Hmmm, another aspect I should perhaps consider when I'm throwing those assignments out there.  I never could get it, and to be honest, it was on a day I was already worn plumb to a frazzle, so I did one page for the pink and one for the remaining words.  I like my joy page.  Umm, still no paints-no, none at all.




Next, bah, humbug, the instructions were to get into the paint and play around.  Try to recreate the pattern from the piece of material in the goody bag.  Have mercy. Do you see that awful mess in the corner ( ha, the top right-I know it's hard to pick which mess). I mixed six ways from Sunday and could not get that purple color. I had paint all over me and everything else. Ahhh, another area of gentle, kindness will be added to art class.  For the rest, I was trying to see how the paint went on with different brushes and if you could put one color on another, etc.  Aren't you glad it wasn't my intention to delight you with my creations.  I did not like this assignment any better than that bubble gum one, but much was learned, including a further reminder of my lack of talent in this area.

Let me just say, it doesn't help that we share these with others taking the class. Others who can sketch and paint circles around me and they would look like circles-imagine. 

 So, we were to continue to mess around with paint and sketches, etc, through the weekend, so I embarked on a couple of pages without teacher direction.  I thought the little 5 x7 card was lovely, and wanted to try out some metallic watercolors I picked up cheap at Tuesday Mornings. Then the blue reminded me of bluebirds and my bluebird house, blah, blah, blah. I enjoyed this one.

 And I loved these fabric swatches. They reminded me of my chickie girls, which reminded me of how long I plotted and hatched (no pun intended) before I realized my dream of chickens.  I just wanted to fool around with my idea of the chicken yard from memory. Next I want to sit out there, then I want to do some work with that bright, cheery material.

I believe the intention is that this sketch book will help you jump off onto a canvas and create a painting for like the wall or something.  Ummm, not feeling it, not anytime soon.  We'll see.

 Lest you think whilst I'm in hot pursuit of a masterpiece, that the Handy Man has been idle, let me assure he has not.  He's been busy harvesting the vegetables.