I had a really good time on this one. I have two more paintings to do for the beginning course but wanted to do something fun and christmassy. 

In a couple of weeks I'm heading to visit my dad at his memory care facility. I thought it would be fun to paint something to decorate his room. This turned out really well so I'm glad I did it. 

I never intended to show any of my paintings to anyone especially after that disaster of a painting class at the community center. I put this one out in a couple of FB groups and granted easy audience but the response has been a lot of fun. A couple of people have argued that there is no way I can be a beginner. I should show them that awful apple to prove it. haha

I'm starting to get a little more confident color mixing. I really enjoyed making these trees but I didn't get them spaced out quite right so things are a bit crowded on the right. I've seen these trees in other paintings so it was cool to see how to do them. Once I finish the beginning course, I'm going to hunt down those fan brush videos. 

I'm moving on but I think I'm going to do this one again, maybe some variation anyway.

What I thought was black was a dark umber. It was working with the other paintings but now trying to do rocks, I mean rocks are not brown. I mixed in some purple and got it to work - then I ordered some black paint.

I've been watching videos on color theory. It's far more complex than I'd like it to be but its more science than art. I'm pretty comfortable with science so I have every confidence that I'll figure it out. 

I ran across a video that it way over my head but I needed something to watch while I was on the rowing machine. He talked about how they always tell you not to use black. The one art seminar I went to they said the same thing. It was all about mixing your own black. The woman running my seminar went into how using the paint out of the tube makes you look like an amateur. It seemed like an odd thing to say to someone who has never done any painting before. I have been having a lot of fun mixing the colors and getting what I want. I don't see any reason not to start with say a green tube and then mixing a bit from there. I haven't really explored the other colors in my kit yet. I was going to get to that when I get through these beginning paintings. 

In the video the guy mixed black and yellow and ended up with green. He was illustrating why it doesn't always work to use black to darken a color. I'm unclear what sorcery is at play here but I'm going with it being akin to a hidden pigment. 

Its the day after Thanksgiving. We're just taking a low key day so I took my time with this one. 

I watched the entire video ahead of time. 

I watched the segment before I did that step.

I spent the time getting the colors like I wanted and worked up the composition. It's still rough in spots but if I keep working at it I'll get better. 

I need to rethink my setup. I wanted to start this with what I had on hand and not spend any more money on this until I decided if I was going to like it. I paid a guy $100 for this whole set of paints because he wanted to go back to oils. Eventually, I'll see what else I have but it's working for now. I do want to get a primary red so I can make orange or maybe just buy orange. 

Since I'm just using a desk to paint, there was an incident when I had yellow paint on the finger I used to steady my canvas. I looked at easels, got overwhelmed, and tabled the idea for now.

I did order a wet palette. I'm really taking my time between steps and that's working nicely but it also means that I have to remix everything since my palette keeps drying out. As much as I need the practice mixing colors, I am burning through paint at an alarming rate. 

AFTER I did this painting and got crazy frustrated, I went back over the color mixing video with my colorsaurous wheel in my hand and a lot more of it is making sense. 

Big Takeaway - I was not able to get a good orange, it kept coming out more Texas orange and I was going for Clemson orange. NOW I know that my red has a blue bias so no amount of yellow was going to make that happen. 

I need a new strategy. I am trying to do too much at once, getting impatient and not getting the results I want. 

I'm going to start watching the entire video before I do a painting. Then instead of trying to do a whole painting in one sitting, break it up. When I get tired things go wrong. 

I may do this one again, I can't decide if I should redo it or forge ahead. I don't want to get stuck and lose interest but at the same time I think I could do this one better. 

Having a devil of a time color mixing. 

I did watch the color mixing video, but it was before I actually started applying brush to canvas so it went right over my head. I just can't quite get the colors to do what I want in this painting. 

The good news is that I am realizing that a lot of painting is teachable. I never had art class in school. By high school, the only kids taking art classes were already artists. I always thought it was just innate. I don't know why because I've spent my life playing the piano and so I've known all my life that you don't just sit down and play the piano. 

I have no doubts there are limits but I'm having fun and it'll be interesting to see how far I can take this if I put in the effort. 

Took a break from the march through the beginning acrylic course and painted this little tree. I'm thinking about hanging it up in my dad's room - maybe 

I thought this would be a good one to do because the color mixes don't look too complex. 

It was fun to do the toothbrush trick for the snow. I didn't have all the right tools from the video but it was fun and I think I made it work. 

This is a mess but it's totally ok. 

Story is, I had decided to give up painting when my husband outlined this idea he had about setting up a studio in a spare bedroom. He has been concerned that my life as a workaholic is not healthy and really was excited that I was picking up painting. I spent some time looking through all the tutorials and paintings others have been posting on the FB page and I really think I could do this but I do not want to do another in person painting class, at least not for a long time. 

I started working on the mason jar flower tutorial and then had to be away from home for a few days followed by one stunningly horrible case of food poisoning. I had gotten as far as the leaves and got frustrated with not being able to get them to look like I wanted. 

Since I binged the entire beginning acrylic painting class in a week, I thought the thing to do was to start over and take it slower this time. I went back over the brush stroke video and practiced a bit but it's just more fun to paint a picture so I pulled this back out and finished it today. 

The idea was just to push through and have fun with it. I had a good time doing the purple flowers, iffy on the others and my paint was getting lumpy and I was losing patience by the time I got to the butterfly but the important thing is that it turned out better than I thought it would and I'm encouraged to keep going. 

Today is Wednesday and after my disastrous painting class, I managed to burn through the entire beginning acrylic painting class. I feel more ready for my next class at the community center.  

Because I've always wanted to learn how to paint and was looking to meet people in a new city, I signed up for a beginning painting class at the local community center. 

Before I signed up, I emailed the instructor and explained that I've never done any painting of any kind. She assured me that was fine and that someone else was brand new too.

There was a choice of buying a bunch of stuff I didn't understand or paying a $10 materials fee. I opted to pay the fee and asked what I should bring. I was given a list and put my materials together. 

Morning of the event, the instructor told me she didn't have acrylics but I could use her oil paint. I honestly didn't know the difference so ok. 

We spent the first part of the class on color mixing. I'm hanging in there so far. This is pretty much science at this point. 

Then she sat at apple down in front of us and told us to paint it. 

I'm sorry WHAT?

I have no clue how to even get started. I start fiddling around with the palette making colors. The cheap plastic pallet that I picked up at the local craft store was apparently all kind of the wrong thing even though I did specifically ask what I needed to bring.

I watched what everyone else did and then just figured I'd start playing around. Better than staring at that blank canvas.  below is the result  At one point she asked me if I was LOOKING at the apple.

Oh yeah, I see the apple there. It was what I now know of as turning to mud. Keep in mind, I didn't know how to load a brush. I'd never even seen a palette knife. I wanted to just start over with new paper but for some reason that was verboten and instead she had me blot the paint off with paper towels. 

I made a right proper mess and then tried to clean it up with water. I mean these brushes she loaned me were coated with paint, I was coated with paint, the sink and a dozen paper towels were coated with paint. Trying to clean it made it so much worse. When I made a lame Lady MacBeth joke trying to get all the paint off my hands, I'm shocked she didn't throw me out. 

There are only two classes in this series and the second one is Friday. I'm going back because I did make a couple of friends while I was there so that was one goal at least.

When I got home, I ordered some supplies of my own and started researching beginning acrylic painting. I ran across this course and it is amazing. I now see several things I did wrong and am working on a strategy to get through Friday's class. 

The only downside is that part of what I wanted to do was learn to paint as a way to reduce stress. It was incredibly stressful to have no idea what I was doing. Its pretty stressful to binge watch as many painting videos as I can like I'm cramming for a test.  

These videos and the paintings that I've been obsessing over all weekend make me think that maybe I can at least learn enough to hang in there and not embarrass myself.