And that question is: What’s Karen’s been painting?
Or: What’s Karen been trying to paint?
Just your typical lounge room. Tweetdeck open in the background; television off (for once); and…oh, yes, my picture, most inconspicuously placed on the floor.
I bet you’re just dying for a closer look aren’t you? Well, sure, I can…
Hey! Riley! I know it’s captivating, but could you scooch over a little to the left please?
No?
Well, okay, I’ll come closer but not too close as not to scorch the eyes of our gentle readers by the glory of the picture!! (Children are seemingly immune to its radiance)
You don’t believe me? You don’t think it’s special?
Okay. Fine. It’s shit. I’ll admit it. Even in my Ish-ly zen-like mood I can see that.
How?
Because it’s supposed to look like this*
O- M- F- G
There is next to no similarity. I ruined mine at stage 3 and thought to myself, bugger it I’ll draw in a sunset. Just to give it a bit of extra colour, a bit of vitality. And who knows, it could end up being one of those pictures that looks up-close like a mess but from a distance it all makes sense.
Well, in my case, even if you were standing in Canada looking over the Pacific at it I doubt you’d solve its many…shall we say…mysteries.
Maybe next time, eh?
* Painting exercise taken from Jeremy Ford’s How To Paint Watercolours.
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Hey, it’s a good start and you have to crawl before you can walk.
Take a deep breath and paint another.
Slowly.
With patience.
Teeny tiny paint on your brush.
You can always add more but you can’t take away.
Eveyone has to start somewhere… I reckon you are too hard on yourself!
Says me who only does abstract painting!
Did you pencil sketch it first? Because that would help. Very lightly so the pencil doesn’t show through the paint.
Also, what Jayne said about teeny tiny amounts of paint, but on a teeny tiny brush.
It’s not such a bad beginning.
I painted a tree on canvas recently. It was HARD. Up close it looks amateur, from a distance it looks slightly less so. It’s hanging on the wall now. I should probably tell people the kids did it.
Thanks guys for your advice/support. I should’ve added I wasn’t using proper watercolours out of a tube, but only the pressed powder ones in a tin you can buy for $1 for kids!! But then Adam uses them too and gets good results (he’s the artist in the family). As you say though – practice!
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