watching paint dry, and watching art lessons

welcome to Paint Party Friday.
Painting has provided a vacation from anxiety this week. I am so grateful.

All of the paintings and drawings this week came from lessons in Sketchbook Revival. It is free, momentary, and worth more to me than gold. It got me painting again last year.

I approach each lesson by turning to a new sketchook page, and drawing the teacher, dating the page, and being open to learning. There have been lessons I thought would teach me nothing like "working with clay" since that's not my medium of choice and I don't have any. But...
each teacher has taught me life lessons and the "clay teacher led me to self discovery and a way of relating to the process I hadn't thought of.

Some times the ones I look forward to because of the title of the lesson are not very helpful but I watch them all, slowly two lessons a day, and invest myself in learning.
Drawing and capturing a face is a wonderful way to start the session for me... I've captured so many faces to draw from in future!

Sometimes I share the page with two speakers, if there isn't a lot of art or notes

many of the lessons involve self exploration this time. The woman on the right had us start with a phrase or saying, then interpret it in collage, draw a line across the page and write on one side how the words resonate in truth for you, on the other how they do not.

This woman from HI made me cross by starting out saying you MUST have a real flower petal for this exercise. I live in snowy foothills of CO and there is a health crisis going on causing us to stay inside. I don't have a flower and could do this exercise from a photo but she was adamant and said it several times. I don't let this kind of talk stop me, I make do. I'm a quilter, we make art from bits and pieces! I can't say I learned a lot from her approach, the yellow one on the left was from her instruction, the pink one on the right from my memory of hybiscus. I took away her careful looking at an object, and layering of colors. Always something to learn

Oh and I like how her portrait looked like her!

gosh, I usually draw women! Drawing a man was challenging and fun, the same really. I so liked this man's style. He said to show up, draw and paint and grow, and not worry about the finished product all the time. Doing creative work leads to more and better creative work! Brilliant!

He had us dot the page at random with an ink pen, 100 times. Count them out! Then look for something in the pattern, and start connecting your dots. I saw a little dog! Okay it's pretty abstract but I saw it, and made it and kind of like it. I also love his portrait!

speaking of portraits, this teacher had us use our non dominant hand to sketch a portrait from her words. Now draw eyes, now nose, etc I have less control over my left hand, so I draw softer lines, with lots of wavery sketchy lines. She wanted us to go on to paint them but I was stunned at how much I liked this face. If I'd drawn from life she wouldn't have been so interesting. I love her features so much and could never improve on her.
I learned not to go back to correct, it usually messes it up and causes a little bit of magic to fade. I learned how much character is in a nose to mouth ratio, that a perfectly symetrical nose isn't the prettiest. I always liked character in my friend's faces!

Funny thing is I intensely dislike the portrait I made of the teacher this time! I went back, tried to correct it, looked at her closer, where did I go wrong??

I never captured her image, she was much prettier than this.

What makes a drawing look like the person vs harsher? What angle of hair crossing the face makes someone's portrait look hard vs how soft they look in life? What random mark under an eye causes someone to look older?

Lips and teeth make an enormous difference.
She had quite thin lips but my painting makes her look skeletal.

Seeing VS looking





I've done more lessons but I'll share those next Friday.
I signed up with one teacher, to receive her wisdom by email. She put out a call last weekend for a world wide prayer, across the globe all at the same moment, for us to pray for healing.

She gave us this drawing to color in as we thought about what we'd pray...

I love the image and clipped it over the calendar image I don't care for this month. Both DH and I prayed at the appointed time, sending our energy out to each other and God, to the collective.
I prayed for physical healing from the current health crisis, not just an incovenience as some believe, but also for people to wake up and see we're here for more than making money.
Money is important to survival but money can't be made if we don't survive

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO97wSZmBmg


Linking to
http://floralfridayfoto.blogspot.com/
https://paintpartyfriday.blogspot.com/