Gratitude Discussion Group

@parus

Thank you for your kindness. I always read posts from you and Lionness. I feel like we're buddies. I want you to see the painting I'm making of my husband. It's not finished of course, but you can get the idea. 😊

@gailb I'm sure he will love it Next time they have a class at OLLIE I will take a class

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@gailb Thank you for sharing!! I am always happy to see others doing creative things. Probably because I know how much it means to me and
how it helps me. A chance to escape from the things of life that can seem overwhelming at times. My little scamp spent most of the day with me today. Always a pleasure. Keep us updated as you can on painting and hope your hubby sees a doctor. I like your new profile picture. 👍

@gailb- Good morning- Is your husband an Old salt? Mine is. I love the composition!

@gailb Forgot to ask. Which painting medium. Off to a good start. I am still doing my version of zentangle and having a ball!! Giraffes and tigers oh my!!

parus- This is water color or watered down acrylic I think

@parus @merpreb @lionness

The painting is in oil, although right now it looks almost like water color. I'm just laying in the main colors now and will be deepening the colors and adding the details later. I've never worked in oil this way before . . . when I was younger I just slathered it all on as quickly as possible and then mushed around with the details. I used a more abstract, multi-colored approach for everything, more like VanGogh's use of movement and color. I was always afraid that I couldn't make art that was lifelike. I like that approach, but I'm challenging myself to be more disciplined now. We'll see how I do. I'll send you updates as I get more done on this.

No, my husband isn't an old salt, LOL. He looks like he is, but we were actually on a boat tour of Morro Bay when I took this photo. He was very relaxed at the time.

Lioness, I keep hearing about OLLIE classes from my friend Anne. I'm going to look into their painting classes as well. I want to start the water color class as well, but don't have the time right now.

Yes, I find that drawing and painting makes everything else disappear. I lose myself in what I'm doing and time is irrelevant. I think they call that being in the "zone." I found that to be true when I was developing film and making black & white photos in my dark room 40 years ago. I loved it, but times change. I was fortunate to be able to attend an Ansel Adams Gallery Workshop at the University of Arizone when I was in my 20s. He asked me to work with him in the darkroom to see his method of developing his photographs during the workshop. I didn't know who he was at the time--wow! I like photography because I didn't have to worry about making lifelike art.

I am grateful for the wonderful opportunities I've had in my life. They have opened my horizons, my heart, my mind, and my spirit to learning and to meeting and accepting new people. I'm also grateful for Citalpram for taking the fear out of all my endeavors. Thanks for your feedback everyone.

Gail- How do you put a picture on here? I'll share a photo of one of my watercolors.

@gailb Wow, how many photographers wish they could have been in the darkroom with Ansel Adams... what a learning experience. What he did well was to find abstract patterns in nature and photograph them, and then develop and print the photos with magical light in them. If you apply that thinking to your paintings, you'll make interesting compositions. Good representational art work also has a good abstract pattern in it that attracts the eye first before you see what the details are. Don't be afraid that you can't paint something the way you want to.... all artists face that, just do your best. It's OK to fail, and you're going to learn a lot about success by failing at your experiments. You don't have to put any expectations on yourself about showing it to other people while you are painting, just be in your zone and consider that to be your safe place of refuge where you can play and experiment. Keep at it and you'll see your artistic abilities grow, and always learn by looking at work by the masters and figure out how they did something. You do need drawing ability behind your representational paintings that will help you judge if your brush strokes are in the right place and correctly representing the mass and structure of the subject.

@merpreb There is a photo/files button on the reply window (top right). The photo needs to be no larger than 5 megs (and that makes it really large on the Connect page at that size), and you can browse to it on your computer, select it and upload it. You can view it 100% size on your computer to see how big it might look before uploading, and downsize a copy if you want it smaller.