I'm such a slacker.
Even when I was taking a class for the sheer pleasure of taking it, with no pressure upon me to do anything more than show up (if I felt like it!), I still waited until the last minute to do my work. I do so strive for consistency.
It was Winter back when I was taking my watercolor class, and as we wound our way toward the end of our sessions, each class would have fewer and fewer attendees. Until finally, at the next to last class, there were only four of us, not counting our teacher. For the final class, the teacher decided that we could have a mini art show, and we would all bring in all of our various projects we work on in our free time, in addition to the two projects we had done in class.
Wait, all our projects? You mean, stuff we did on our own?
Crap.
Yeah, I know- what the hell's the point in taking a class if you're never going to use it(College excepted- that is the point)? But it was tough to get going on any watercolor projects on my own. Back then, my artistic mojo was pretty badly damaged, and just painting the couple projects we had was a huge drain on my mental resources. So I'd really never gotten around to coming up with my own paintings.
Crap.
Well, thanks to the internet, I found some fairly awesome photos I thought would make for good paintings, and on Sunday I started drawing them.
Class was Tuesday. Plenty of time.
I actually finished two of the three pictures, and had partially completed this one, by the time class had rolled around. All was well. When I got there, only two other people made it in, plus the teacher. We had fun looking at each other's paintings, noting the progress we'd made, and chatted while we worked on those pictures we hadn't finished. This was the one I worked on that night. The others thought I was crazy for trying to paint it- it was a landscape class, and this was no landscape, not to mention my paper was covered in pencil marks.
But it is not I who am crazy. It is I who am mad.
I finished it, as you can see. The actual photo was of a statue of an angel somewhere in Italy (see how good my note-taking skills are). It was probably way beyond my skill level at the time, but I'm still pretty pleased with the results. The large portion of thanks for that goes to the magnificent photographer. The angle of the image, I think, is critical to the impact of it. I changed a number of things in it, mostly to suit the colors and the texture of the image.
A note about this scan- the colors you see are actually much sharper and darker here than on the actual paper itself. Watercolors do not lend themselves to scanning.
Finally, a note on my Dad: my sense of timing is as acute as ever. He came home late Tuesday night, I believe muttering something about "never tell me the odds" and is doing now doing well at home. Thanks to all who've kept him in their thoughts and/or prayers. Believe me, it's all appreciated. And thanks to all of you for taking this detour into very non-artistic places. Don't worry, I'll be resuming the goofy art, bad puns, and rambling postings before you kno-
Oh, right. Too late!
Cheers everyone! Have a good weekend.
Music. hmmm... so many angel-themed tunes to choose... "Angel" by Aerosmith? "Send Me an Angel" by the Scorpions? Nah. I'll go with the one I always think of when I think of angels and music (which, I admit, is not frequently):
Music: "Animate" - Rush
No comments:
Post a Comment