Some Painting

I had a staycation this past week and my plan was to use some of the time to get some painting in.I had originally though tI’d play with some water mixable pools, but those can wait a little longer, Instead I got the acrylics back out and starting doing some simple still life paintings.

Acrylic on paper with larger brushes than usual, I’ve painted a sugar bowl twice and a teapot twice. Both are rounded ceramic forms in plat colors. I was happy with how I was able to mix colors to match the sage green and the bright orange with the paints I had on hand. I discovered that I really don’t understand how to paint shadows of objects on tables, so I’ll be doing some studying on that subject. But I was happy to fin that I enjoyed these very simple still life studies, that I’m learning from them, and that I can see improvement.

I was also happy to find that my drawing skills were perfectly adequate for getting the initial guidelines on the paper. Now I just need to rehearse those lines in my head as I’m painting so that I don’t accidentally lose the form. Weirdly, my regular graphite sketching this week has been affected. I find myself much less interested in doing finished, clean sketches. They’re loose and messy. And when I try to push through that, the drawings are getting horribly over modeled and stiff. I think it’s just something I’ll need to not worry about for now. Just keep making bad art.

This week I also realized I needed to change one of my mantras. It’s not enough to be willing to make bad art. Instead you need to be positively committed to the process and goal of making bad art. Which is why I’m doing this work on paper and will probably stash some of it away in a box to look at in the future to remind myself that I’ve made progress.