Paint for Joy, Not Perfection!

A while back... maybe a few months, maybe a year, I drew this out on a canvas at school to show students how easy it is to grid a portrait quickly and precisely. It's from a photo that I took of Kylie in our old house.. so the photo is easily a few years old! Anyway...  I drew it and then moved on.

Last night I had some paint out on the palette left over from the painting I just finished so I decided to just paint the portrait.

And so I did. Complete with children that had to be fed, Doug away at a meeting and life happening all around. I got the basic face done before bed. After everyone was asleep I was able to work about an hour in peace. It's a rare gift.

Then this morning, I finished the painting up. You can see the photo that I worked from in the picture below.

Here is a close up. The oil paint is still wet.

 And here is Kylie showing off her portrait.

So why do I give you the back story and not just the finished piece? Because I think it is important for the viewer of the painting to know that I paint for the joy of it. Not for perfection.

I have the ability to paint it perfectly. But that would be incredibly time consuming and frustrating. If I simply want an exact copy, I can order an enlargement of the photo easily. 

But I paint for the joy of painting. Painting is good for my soul. It makes me calm down, take a deep breath and enjoy the process. So much of life is about hurrying and "getting things done."   Granted, I still paint incredibly quickly. All in, I painted the portrait in a total of less than 6 hours... and all but about an hour of it was with my "groupies." The little girls even painted next to me this morning. It's good for their souls to paint too.

People are all the time saying to me that they can't paint, or they don't have any artistic skill or that they "can't even draw a stick figure.." My answer is to do it anyway. 

The more we create, the more we have the capacity to create. 

We have to move past the expectation that our paintings should be exact copies of what we are looking at, or perfectly executed, or even "pretty" to look at. There is something incredibly cathartic about mixing paint on a canvas. Sure, when the colors mixed actually look like the color you wanted, it's great, but that takes time and practice. I am constantly amazed that people think being able to draw and/or paint realistic things/objects/people is supposed to be easy. But that everything else we learn to do, be it read, tie our shoes, throw a football or even drive a car is expected to take effort, practice and a lot of work. Why should art be any different? 

Someone along the way said it was "easy" and he/she LIED!

So, here is my challenge to all of you out there. Stop giving up before you even start! Go buy a cheap canvas and some paint. And paint. Paint a rainbow if that's what you loved to paint as a child. Or a Ninja Turtle.. or a car or a tree. You could even just put the paint on the canvas in a random pattern!

But create. Today. Not for perfection. For the JOY!

Work in Progress

One of the things that I am really trying to focus on this year in my classroom is for my students to see me creating artwork.

This is what I am working on currently.

It's a mixed media, colored pencil, marker and watercolor piece.

I'm having a lot of fun. Working 10 seconds at a time will do that for you.  It keeps it fresh.

My students love to see that I am drawing and painting too. And they never quite know what to do when I ask them for feedback and critiques! They try to just say they like it... but nope, I force them to pick apart my work and offer suggestions.

I'm hoping to finish it next week.

To double post or not

Now that I have an official art portfolio online that I can post too... I have to figure out what to post where. 

I guess I'll end up double posting. The finished product here and the process there?  Or should it be the process here and the product there?

Hmmm... Gonna have to figure that out.

Anyway... I made this last night while the family was watching movies in various rooms all over the house. (I'm not a movie person..)

I wasn't planning on doing a blue marker piece, but sometimes you just go with the inspiration and let it flow! In fact, since I wasn't planning on doing this in marker, I had already drawn the girl in colored pencil on watercolor paper. Let's just say that watercolor paper and markers are not usually used together. The tooth of the paper causes the marker to bleed and spread. But I liked how it looked, so I went with it.

And there you have it. Isn't it fun! 

Not your everyday colored pencil portrait!

I love this piece. I really do. It's weird and strange and different. I get that. And for some, they won't get that. But that's okay, cause I really like how this portrait turned out and since I'm the artist, I get to decide if it was successful.

So how did I create this piece? Well, I took the picture of Kylie. She LOVES to pose for the camera. Try to get a straight and simple picture of her, she refuses, but ask her to do a silly face or a crazy face or something fun, and she is all over it!

Then I printed the piece in black and white with a posterized effect.

Then I drew it. Then I colored it with colored pencil. I used four shades of color pencil, all were shades of orange plus white. While i started this on watercolor paper that was white, I knew that for the effect to work, I had to color the white areas white.

After laying down a lot of layers of colored pencil, I painted India ink on the back side,

 Then flipped it over and did the same to the front. Yep, you paint over the ENTIRE picture. This is always a scary part. At this point you are praying that you burnished your colored pencil really well!

Then I took the piece over to my art sink and ran water over it to get the ink off her face.  Then blot dry and done.

I did go back over her face with a paper towel and some germx (that was what was on the counter..) and made sure that the ink was off the face.  But other than that, you get what you get when painting ink over colored pencil.

Here it is on the drying rack.

I enjoyed this process that I am working on another one. So far it is NOT as successful. Grr. The problem is that I tried to lay oil pastel over the colored pencil and ink and now its curing weird. It may be a total loss... or not, I'll just keep working it and see.  But any time you experiment, you run the risk of the piece not turning out the way you wanted. It's worth it though cause sometimes the piece is turns out better than you expected.. kinda like this portrait of Kylie!

Semester Exams.

One of the great things about being an art teacher is that when it is exam time, I don't have to grade papers!!

This semester, my students have to take a picture of their face, looking at the camera and draw half of it.

It's an easy and pretty fun little project.

Perfect for a final in my opinion!!

Here is my sample I created for them today :)

Watercolor Portrait of my Granddad

 



I'm working on lesson plans and in doing so, I'm getting a chance to create for myself!  My art 1 students will start watercolor next week and I am going to have them create a 2 or 3 tone watercolor portrait. 

The above watercolor is of my grandfather. I know it looks kinda weird, it's supposed to. It's a 3 tone posterized portrait. But I have to say, I love how it looks in person!  And I'm thrilled that I am taking the time to create as well.

I've decided that I'm going to do a full concentration of these little watercolors. Yep, another goal set!!

Family Portraits in Bluebonnets

If you are ever traveling down the highway or interstate in Texas during late March- early May, you might see the interesting phenomena of parents and children walking down the busy road looking for a treasure.

The treasure: Bluebonnets, our state flower.

And it’s not just bluebonnets these people are looking for.  Because they aren’t going to pick them. They are looking for wildflowers that have not been trampled by the hordes of families looking for that perfect spot for their yearly family picture!

I don’t know if other states have rituals like this, but in Texas, having your pictures taken in the bluebonnets yearly is a right of passage. 

There is just something about traipsing through the tall grass, looking at the beautiful flowers, and listening for the sound of a rattlesnake that just gets your blood flowing! ( I’m not kidding either).

Yep, knowing that snakes could be slithering around, we still put our children down into the grass.  I know.  We are crazy.  However, I can say that I looked very closely before we stepped into the grass.  And, we were at a friend’s ranch and they had only seen one rattler the weekend before… you know how we Texans are!

Okay, kidding aside. Can you blame me?  Take a look at more of these incredible pictures.

It’s crazy, this last picture isn’t the prettiest picture of me, but I love it.  I didn’t even know that I was in the picture.  We were just having fun :)

Oh, and one more thing… Nope, I didn’t take the pictures.  One of my student’s took them.  She’s incredible!  As soon as she gets a blog or website I’ll pass on the information.  Until then, she’s still one of my students!