In Action How Like an Angel...

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

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

Melancholy; or, a non-musical interlude, with music

I felt like posting again tonight (as I seem to be falling to Tuesday/Thursday/weekend rather than MWF), but not another set of HP sketches or something like that. So, here's a painting I did back in my previous attempt to rekindle the artistic fire, my watercolor class.

I found the original of this(and a number of other pictures) on Photo.net, a lovely place full of all kinds of pictures from many talented photographers. Something about this picture really struck me, and I thought it would be worth giving it a go in attempting to paint it. It is a deceptively simple photo- I mean, hell, it's snow, a guy, a tree, and water. But, it was exceedingly difficult to make look like it's meant to be seen. I'd say I've gotten about 70% of what I wanted out of the picture. The problem with the scanner is that it has a tendency to wash out the colors as seen on the page; this is probably why Dave suggests taking pictures of the pictures. But I am impatient and like playing with Photoshop. This image was orignally posted on my livejournal site.

As far as the picture, I really like it. It's a very stark and lonely image. This poor fellow, standing in the biting wind, wrapped up against the cold and the snow, is keeping watch out to sea, waiting for someone to arrive. There's a story in that picture. Maybe I'll tell you sometime. Maybe you already know it. Maybe you've told it yourself. That's what I saw in that picture.

That's all for now... see you on Friday.

Music: "Falling Slowly"- Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova. The music itself sounds very haunting, the lyrics perhaps even moreso, yet still I find them uplifting. It makes for a good companion piece to the art.