"Je Dessine" (I Draw) Show-and-Tell Mondays

 Painting 2011 Still Life with Clay Horses 

I didn't draw this past week. Taxes, an out-of-the-blue necklace commission, catching up with journal pages, and an impending trip to Europe was taking all of my energy. However, today (which is actually Tuesday), I had my art lesson with Sabrina. I was late and Sabrina was lying on her bed with her headphones on, waiting for me. I had to yell to get her attention. "I almost gave up on you" she said. I started to say I thought we had changed the time, and then I thought -- don't argue with the teacher -- and sat myself down and grabbed a sharpie. "Arrange this still life I started to create" Sabrina said. So I got up, rearranged the bright red tulips, the patterned scarf, and added a few pottery horses to the arrangement, and sat down again. "Now look through this viewfinder and paint in the colors that you see in the corners. Don't draw -- just paint in the corners with the colors you see."

 

How Do I Make Orange? Palette

Fumbling around I felt totally out of my element. I have never really "painted". Don't draw what I see first? I.was not happy. I was just putting down blotches of acrylic paint. It looked gross. I felt out of control. I grumbled. Sabrina said, "Now paint the center with color -- then fill in all of the white areas." "Keep adding color." I finally filled in all of the paper, and then said "Now what?" "Take a pen or pencil and add in what you see." My alarm meter went haywire...but I did as I was told.

With Patsy Cline playing in the background. ("I've got your photo, she's got you..."), at some point I stopped being concerned with what was actually in front of me and got into whatever was inside of me. This is hard to describe. Like the flowers don't really have to be tulips. Or the scarf's flowers are becoming part of the bouquet. But at one point she looked at what I was doing and said "Now you're painting." And I could feel that the she was right. When I finally finished and looked at what I had done, I started crying. It didn't look like what was in front of me, yet it did. It wasn't perfect, yet it was. And I was extremely grateful that I had been encouraged, and that I had been courageous enough to go to a place that was unknown. Something of who I am combined with what I saw, and ended up colorfully on paper. "This is the seed of a painting," said Sabrina. How amazing!