Recommended reading and listening

A gazillion years ago this book was assigned reading for a short round of couples therapy. I read it and had huge ah HA! moments. The therapy didn’t go very well but I found it personally successful. Since then, I’ve recommended the book to people over the years, along with a couple others by the same author.

I had a few Audible credits to use up and for some reason this turned up in recommendations so I took a chance on it. I also found an Audible version of The Art Spirit by Robert Henri (pronounced Hen-rye) and I got that too. Previously I’d listened to a a handful of recordings from the Dalai Lama.

The Art Spirit was good in audio form. Reading it is like reading a lot of quotes and snippets stirred together. The narrator really did a good job and made it sound like a kind, knowledgable and skilled art instructor and mentor, talking to and instructing his students. I came away with a lot to think about, not how to apply paint, but what to aim for and a lot of whys about being an artist.

Today I started the Albert Ellis book, How to Stubbornly Refuse to Make Yourself Miserable about Anything, Yes, Anything! and it is even better than I remember! If you want to work through the exercises it comes with a PDF version you can download. I also had a moment of being wildly excited as the basic precepts of buddhism snuck in during the introduction. Guess all the time spent with the Dalai Lama was well spent. Also guess I might pick up the new edition after listening to it.

Recommended reading and listening

How far can it go?

I wanted to make the upper portion darker and more blue to suggest the window behind the flowers. That was mostly a negative painting exercise. I also used some shadow colors to suggest a few leaf edges and some depth to the foliage. I am pretty pleased with it. Plus I got practice in letting it really dry and not rushing it!

Here’s how it began:

How far can it go?

Spontaneous Watercolor Class Part Three

I’ll have to go back and watch part two again because in part three, it seemed doing wet on dry was quite different – and it worked great to make funky little edges and shapes. The continuing theme is to look at the little pieces in all orientations to see if anything pops out as useable. Quite an interesting process.

Spontaneous Watercolor Class Part Three

Monday already.

When I woke up this morning I was an itchy mess. Or at least my neck and chin were an itchy mess. I was going to take some benadryl, but I guess this doesn’t happen often enough (thank goodness) so the first order of business for the day was to drive to Nassau and get some Benadryl to replace what I had with an expiration of 2017. It had reduced a lot of the puffiness and some of the itchiness. Not a lot of itchiness but some. (my guess is that I finally reacted to some poison ivy after all these years) I didn’t want to drive around with Benadryl on board so I did a little this and that and some painting.

First I did this of some of my plants waiting for planting.

Today was the second lesson by Mind of Watercolor YouTuber Steve Mitchell – spontaneous watercolor landscapes. He’s so calming and reassuring. Full of reminders that this is about learning a process and not every one of these will turn out good. It’s about the experimentation and practice. I posted my four sample pieces from last week here and here and truthfully today I was only supposed to play around with the two wet on wet pieces but oh well. I have more paint and more paper!

Monday already.

Second go at Spontaneous Landscape Starts

Got the wet on wet one less wet but still pretty juicy. The other one is cool looking but nothing in it really speaks landscape to me. I am thinking it’s so dark it may need gouache to paint on top of it.

Second go at Spontaneous Landscape Starts

Another rainy day, with bits of blue sky

Woke up unexpectedly to yesterday’s alarm. Yesterday I’d driven to get my car maintenance done and today I had no morning plans so I shut off the alarm and considered the morning.

putting out big pots
knocking out last year’s plants
stubborn balls of roots.

stack of seed packets
will they grow faster than weeds
or just hopefulness?

Fiddled around with two exercises for an online workshop with Steve Mitchell – all about the amount of water… will do a couple more of these before next week’s class.

Another rainy day, with bits of blue sky

Addressing Your Colors

This is just a great quote by Robert Genn:

For those of us who struggle with colour and painting every day, my current conclusion regarding this research is to be of two eyes. Your honest, truthful eye sees the colour, and your knowledgeable eye knows how to mix it. You need to address your pigments on a first-name basis.

Addressing Your Colors

NaPoWriMo – April Thirtieth Already

Lots of wind, my first growler (go ahead, you can laugh, I live to entertain), and other things. What an April it has been and now onto May. You may continue to see some poems here for awhile until the pandemic winds change things around again. I’ve blended this year’s NaPoWriMo into some early cards for August PoPo so more to come.

Or until the DSL lines come crashing down altogether.

The end of April. Long month of grey days
with golden double lines – stay where you are
it warns as it dips and winds around town.
Wind is pummeling the house. Isn’t that
more like March with its half-remembered kites?
And yet, here we are, blown around like
teenagers with an abundance of so
much everything but no experience
to hang it all on, flailing, some flying
lightly, scooping the sky, slurping up
the tough cord, stringing it as clothesline
doing a windy tango of its own
How’s the weather up there, the cord-paying
hand telegraphs, hoping for a tugged reply.

NaPoWriMo – April Thirtieth Already

Figure Painting Studio

I sketched, I used water-soluble graphite, I watercolored… This album has all four weeks and you can see the newest at the end.

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Figure Painting Studio

World Watercolor Month Day #22

It rained all day and it’s still raining. Which is good because during that insane sunset last night the temperature and humidity dropped 10 points each and this morning it was a swell 65F.

An online tutor that I have, Alan Owen in the UK, posted a video demonstrating mixing various greens and wondering what blues and yellows we were using to mix greens. He’d asked me that question the other day about a painting I’d posted to the group and I have the feeling he’d prefer that we all mix our greens. I do test mixes from time to time because in theory mixing greens make sense. You have blues and yellows on your palette that should be all you need to mix up whatever you need. In reality I keep a few greens on my palette and mix from there. I think it’s often water control that messes me up.

But anyway – rainy day and a question worth answering – what greens can you get from the blues and yellows on your palette (and beyond). I took nine blues and six yellows and did a rather orderly mixing chart. Then I did a page of just various greens I have.

I’ve been thinking of setting up the new palette I got recently but was trying to figure out how to make it different than the one I’m carrying at the moment. So while pondering this I swatched out the yellows and red and browns plus a few purples. That about covered the whole spectrum.

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World Watercolor Month Day #22