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Art Day—ARRGGHH Edition

ARRGGHH—Painting is so hard!!

Last week, I was visiting a woman who lives on the edge of town—she had built a modern open-concept house next door to the traditional farmhouse where she had grown up 60 years earlier, and I stood in the driveway between the two houses admiring the farmland and blue skies around me, and I decided to take some pictures of things the woman had displayed around her yard. She collects angels, and among them, I discovered some pots with artificial flowers.

I made a sketch based on the photograph:

And then I tried to paint it, and the result frustrates me to no end. There are some things I like about the texture of the pots, but I think I see my weakness—a general inability to draw. So, I think before I get anywhere with this painting thing, I'm going to have to figure out that major step. A class, maybe?

Comments

dive said…
Practice makes perfect, Robyn and you are way too hard on yourself. These are great, though I am SO glad you missed off the fake stone angels.
kyle@sift said…
Painting is not hard. Trying to paint things to look like photographs is hard...technique is learned...style is handed to us...perhaps even given to us.
dive said…
Good point, Kyle. I never painted from photos, Robyn. One of the first basic exercises we were given at art college was to paint the space around things (like Neetzy's painting site: Negative Space).
Try painting and drawing from life; your two eyes give a different perspective to the camera's single lens and allow you to see around the object you are painting and allow you to paint what the object actually is rather than - as with a photo - merely what the object looks like.
If you need any inspiration, head back into my archives under the "art" link and study my drawings of … er … nekkid men. Hee hee.
Madame DeFarge said…
I'm just impressed that you do it at all. Why don't you go to some classes? you might discover that you're way better than everyone else.

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