Let's Talk About Painting

Because I hate painting. Like, I hate it a lot. A lot, a lot. It's a three hour class of mostly torture, for a couple different reasons. But, today, I actually didn't hate it as much as I was sure I was going to. You can gasp now. It's okay. I did too.

Usually when I get to painting class, I fumble around, haphazardly mixing paints, not really knowing what to do with myself. I get up and leave after I reach certain mini goals and I'll reward myself with a bagel for making it to 4 o'clock. (Class starts at 2:30 btw.)

However, today was a little different. But first, some back story!

This first image is what I started with at the beginning of today's class. It's pretty horrendous, and it started out even worse when I began this painting on Monday. I know that red and blue make purple, and red and yellow make orange, and yada yada that you learn in kindergarten when you play with tempera and watercolor painting lovely versions of your house, your mom, and flowers (at least if you were a girl when you were in kindergarten).

But as you can see, mixing paints to get exactly the right color that matches the real life color isn't my strong suit. I have all sorts of colors that don't belong, and ones that aren't the right shades in the right places, and wow, it's just a mess.

It doesn't look like fabric, and the shading is driving me bonkers. If this were charcoal I would be ahead of the game, but as it is painting class, I'm just frustrated with the whole thing. But then Dan gave me a lesson in how to mix and match colors and set me on my way the tail end of Monday's class, so I came to class today prepared to do some work.

I figured I would probably work for a little bit, and then mosey around like I usually do, but today I pulled out all the stops and only left when I needed to change over my water or rinse out my brush, or both. And using my new found knowledge supplied by Dan, I got a bigger paint brush and went to town.

For like, two and a half hours nonstop.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I don't think you understand what a great accomplishment that is for me. You see, Prince is in the classroom right next door, and not only am I spending three hours in a room learning to do something I hate, but I'm constantly bombarded with thoughts of him. HOWever, yesterday I listened to a podcast from my home church that helped me see things differently and today I really didn't have that hard of a time being in the next room. Plus, unlike Monday I didn't actually see Prince today, so that helped too.

But anyway, I put the pedal to the medal and here's what I ended up leaving class with:

I'm still not done yet, but we have a couple more class periods to work on it. And I might need to go in on a weekend and work by myself to get it done in time for our critique, but overall I'm really happy with how it's turning out.

Instead of looking like random paint lines and dark spots, it's actually starting to look like fabric. In fact, I think it kind of looks like Davy Jones from Pirates of the Caribbean.