the scent of water

Payne's Grey

With or without the apostrophe.  I don't know.  I think Payne would have preferred it with.

I was meant to buy something for dinner at the supermarket but ended up in the bookshop instead, standing by the art supplies. At first I picked up some cheap student acrylics, 30% off, but put them back again. I wanted proper paint, with proper names. Titanium white, phthalo blue, paynes grey. 

I have no idea what I am doing, no idea what colours I should be choosing, and my canvas remains blank, but what does it matter?  I am on a first name basis with my paint.

Drawing a blank

With random photo.

The local bookshop was selling canvases for 60% off, so I bought three. One for me, one for Eilidh, and one for Iona. Iona, not one to spend too much time on any one activity, asked for a very small one. She painted a rabbit on a hill with a sunny blue background and declared herself very pleased indeed. There were some small tears along the way when she realised that painting thin outlines on a tiny canvas was a lot harder than anticipated, a situation not at all  helped by her Annoying Mother giving Useless Advice. 

Eilidh took a while to decide her subject matter, then announced she would paint the most amazing flower ever. Which first required drawing the most amazing flower ever, a feat that two weeks later is still just a few petals toward completion. Every stroke and erasure of stroke, and re-stroke, takes her further away from perfection. Her Annoying Mother decided to Stay Well Out of It.

My canvas sits in its plastic wrapping leaning against my bedroom wall. Leaning forlornly. A large 24" x 36", it is destined for the living room wall, and both its size and potential occupation have me running scared. I can fool myself that my previous two tiny paintings stuck on the back of the loo door are just a bit of fun, but 24" x 36" is serious. I see it every time I enter my bedroom, still the same old blank it was the last time I looked, still no Michelangelo-like revelations emanating from it on what it is supposed to be. To be fair I have never asked. I have asked my husband, but he didn't know either. I insisted he tell me something. Um, he said, um, a plant.

So. A blank it remains.

It's kind of crap.

It was a long weekend and I had a painting itch. I wanted to do something a bit  comic and theoretically simple, but after twenty gazillion repaints, I couldn't get it right. It may have been useful if I knew what 'right' was supposed to look like.

At least it's bright, and there's a star. Also, I want to live on a quilt hill. I hung it in the loo alongs side the bird; it's our own private art gallery. I may start charging admission.

Where angels live.

Thank you. Your overwhelming support of my little painting was so encouraging. The kind of pictures I have in my head I am not yet skilled enough to execute, but all that means is the sooner I get practising, the sooner I will be able to execute them.  More likely, I will never be able to execute exactly what is in my head - who can? - but that doesn't matter either. 

Art is so many different things to different people, but what I feel when I paint, when I take pictures, is a shift towards my better self. If we all have our metaphorical demons, then perhaps there are also places where our angels live. I don't know where that place is for you,  but I hope you visit there as often as you are able. Oftener. Me, being able to define what is beautiful for my own self and then doing what I can to make that visible to others, that's when I hear the hallelujahs.

In their book, Art & Fear (from which I unashamedly stole the angel metaphor), authors David Bayles and Ted Orland say this:

To make art is to sing with the human voice. To do this you must first learn that the only voice you need is the voice you already have.

I'm a little old to be learning it, but putting your faith in that voice changes everything.

Painting

The family brought me a small set containing some brushes, a half dozen acrylic paints and a canvas board for Mother's Day. I have a few books from the library that have been inspiring me to just pick up a brush and start painting*, and as daunting as it was, that is what I did. I've never painted before, at least not since kindergarten.

It was a lot harder work than I was expecting. I kind of felt sick most of the way through with the fear I would be awful. Somehow it really mattered.  It's not the world's most amazing painting, I know, and heavily derivative, but there is something about that bird (of indeterminate species) that makes me think I could maybe be good at this if I keep going. Good enough, at least.

And I do plan to keep going. As anxious as I was about the outcome, and as hard work as I found it, I was also fully engaged in the process. My bills, my health, my chores, my family, my study; for a few hours my mind was absorbed enough to let it all go. It was a satisfying place to be.

 

*Art Saves, Jenny Doh; Art at the Speed of Life, Pam Carriker; and my favourite, Unfurling, Misty Mawn.

 

Learning to draw

First drawing lesson complete. A straight copying exercise to determine at which level I should complete lessons for the rest of the book.  I sailed straight through to level 3, which came close to impressing me until I remembered that this is an instruction guide for children and all it means is that I can copy better than your average 5 year old. 

I figure if I practise regularly, it'll only be a decade or two until I can create the kind of art that lives inside my head. The kind of art that makes me feel like I feel when I look at this Brian Kershisnik painting (Women Carrying Houses). Ever since I was very young I have painted things in the privacy of my imagination, one of those automatic things you do and never stop to wonder if it maybe means something. If maybe not everyone does that.

I don't know if they do or if they don't, but I do know that for me it does mean something. For starters, that I have a hell of a lot of learning to do.

 

Make

Build, design, create, imagine, construct, arrange, invent, produce.

I've told myself often enough, and failed to listen often enough: when I don't give myself time to make things, any sort of creative things, I become unhappy, and when I become unhappy, I get sick. I thought I could live with my creativity (whatever that means?) as a peripheral, optional extra.  I thought wrong. 

I have 134 pictures on my 'make' board at Pinterest, and every single one of them remains a figment of my imagination. A random number generator picks out item number 84 for me, which by my count are these tiny wee envelopes (tutorial here). 

There now.  That wasn't so hard.

Resolutions have been made, decisions taken, a book purchased.

Drawing with Children, Mona Brookes. 

 

I am laid up in bed with a virus.  Nothing major, nothing big, just another flashing neon sign from my body that things are not right between us. I am trying to listen. I don't do it very well. 

Sitting here I am thinking about how, when people claim to hate the things they do, I always wonder why they don't then change the things they do? Even just a little bit? I am, for reasons I feel compelled not to bore you with, unwilling to withdraw from my course of study for this year, but there must be, are, ways I can add a little enthusiasm into my day. Drawing like a child, for instance. Taking part in the Creative Every Day community. Knitting up the yellow socks that have existed only in my imagination for the past year. Folding origami butterflies.

Because, to slightly misquote Danny Gregory, it's maybe a good thing to celebrate life now, as it unfolds.