Another Day, Another Sunset

Welcome back everyone. I'm still sick, and still tired, so this will probably be brief. You can stop cheering now...

This was painted early last year. I took a watercolor painting class at the local community college. Watercolor was something I really loved doing back in high school, but hadn't really touched in the intervening years. So, in an attempt to do something social, and something I enjoyed, I took this class. It went pretty well- the class was fun, the folks nice, and it was a good chance to learn some of the fundamentals of watercolor. Learning the process of creating art is always both a pleasure and a pain for me. So much of it is pretty intuitive to me- most everything I've drawn, and certainly everything you've seen posted on here- is the result of what I've taught myself or what I've picked up from looking at other artists. As a result, though I know how to do certain things, I'm lacking what's known as 'fundamentals'. So whenever I'm given the chance to learn the 'proper' way to do something, it makes a huge difference in everything I attempt from there on out. However, it's also very difficult for me to try to learn something new since I've always just done well enough with what I've learned on my own. Anyway, learning's great, but tough.

So here's this picture- one of the last ones I painted, and one that I really like and really dislike. It's a sunset at the edge of some cliffs. No worries there- the original photo was very nice- lots of contrast between the stark black foreground and brilliant sunset, all overlooking the sea. HOWEVER, painting that friggin' sea nearly killed me. I ended up completely re-doing the water three times, just to get it to this state. And it's not easy to re-do watercolor. It involves lots of water and dry brushes. Also, I learned that my paints, while nice, are not that nice. The black and dark blue were both prone to clumping and so on, so the picture isn't as highly contrasted as I'd like. I do really like the sky, though. Unfortunately, the scanner doesn't handle painted pictures really well. I'd probably be better off having Dave take photos of the paintings and posting those. But I didn't, so here you go.

So much for a short post. Suckers.

Music: "Save Me" - Queen