Fun With Paint

So, I just had the best weekend, feeling like a kid again because I just got myself a bunch of art supplies and had a blast painting.

I'm not really a visual person, and fine-motor skills have never been my forte, so I would never have thought that painting would be a viable hobby for me.  Turns out, I may have been wrong.  I doubt I'll ever be "professional grade" or anything close, but I'm having a lot of fun and I think I can still manage some okay stuff.

I blame a friend from church for starting me down this path.  This particular friend is a regular patron of a nearby Paint Your Own Ceramics type shop, which also happens to hold a number of different craft and painting classes.  After seeing my friend's posts and looking at upcoming offerings a few weeks ago, I became intrigued and decided--what the heck?--to try out one of the canvas paining classes.  These feature an image designed by an experienced artist, who gives step-by-step instructions how to re-create that image for yourself.  I really enjoyed the class, and I discovered that even when I couldn't do things "perfectly" the medium of acrylic paint is pretty forgiving.  So I could do this!

My first effort.  The leaves were only supposed to have thin streaks down the middle for veins, but mine turned out thicker.  Then again, that produced a really interesting two-tone effect, and my trees turned out well, so WIN!

Now hooked, I took two more classes.  The latest turned out really well, and the instructor jokingly remarked that, now I'd attended a few classes, I ought to be getting my own supplies to do my own art....  Obviously, great minds think alike, because I'd already ordered some books on painting (it pays to be grounded in the basics before going wild).  Those books arrived on Friday, much to my delight.

My latest painting class result.  This got rave reviews so now IT'S ON!

My appetite thoroughly whetted, it was "kid in a candy store" time.  Reference books in hand, and some extra money in the bank, I skipped to the nearest art supply store and proceeded to run amok.  I picked up an all-purpose easel, palette, some good-quality brushes and paints, a few additional accessories, and a goodly selection of stuff to paint on.  Once home, it was time to convert my poor, dignified dining room into a studio!

Leo and Castor examine my purchases to ensure quality.

Step one, of course, was to remove the (very nice!) table cloths and fold them gently onto a hangar to be stored in a safe location.  Step two was to deploy protective measures:

Smock and drop cloth (re-purposed heavy-duty garbage bag, since it was convenient) to prevent messes--or at least contain them!

Then I got to figure out how the easel worked--pretty straightforward once I got the hang of it--and deploy it in tabletop mode with palette and water-jars standing by.

Looking more like a studio!

Then came the fun part: unpacking all the paints, brushes, sponges and other supplies.  I then arranged them in the very nice caddy I found at the art shop.  With the easel being portable/collapsible, and almost everything else fitting in the caddy, stowing everything away for guests or cleaning days and getting it all back out again will be easy, which is why I splurged on the caddy.  Also, Pollux can't steal my paint brushes when they're stored inside.  That bit is important.

Stuff!

Next I just had to put something on the easel and I'd be ready!

Voila!  A studio!  I switched over to the long side of the table for more room.  

All we required was someone to do the painting....

Portrait of the artist as a young geek.

Then it was playtime.  I started by testing out my colors and getting a first feel for how they mixed.  The basic paint set involves a set of neutrals, a big tube of white, and two shades of each primary for mixing all the secondary colors.  (Turns out you need a yellow-favoring red for mixing oranges, and a blue-favoring red for purples and so on.)  So that's what I've got, though I confess I also picked up tubes of gold, silver and copper metallics.  Because shiny!

After that I tried a few basic exercises proposed by the one book to grow more familiar with my paints and brushes, which were interesting.

Leo and Castor help me with my work.  

Some of these early efforts have now been put up on the wall to add color, because an artistic space should be lively.  I practiced diluting the paint so it acted more like water color, using different brushes, and mixing colors.  I have been able to re-create the slate grey of Siamese Blue Point, but haven't quite managed Leo-Cat Orange, though I think I am close.

My "play wall"--and yes, that is painter's tape, so no walls were harmed in the making of this photo.

Yesterday, I tried creating some "moonglow" using a dry brush, and a nebula effect with sponges.  I think other techniques might yield better results, but that wasn't bad for a first try.

Dry brush "moon" and sponge-tap "nebula" done as an experiment on newsprint.  

That, then, was my weekend.  I'm looking forward to many more spent fooling around in front of an easel.

After Isaac

Isaac has finally left our area (it is now bedeviling the poor residents of Arkansas), but it made quite an impact on "the landmass" before it left.

Yes, this is the ACTUAL tornado watch box that was in effect all day yesterday, stretching hundreds of miles inland from LA to FL.

Some residents in our area are likely to be without power for several days, and flooding is still a concern throughout the state.  There is no telling right know how bad the damage was right down on the coast, but it looks pretty awful.  Miraculously, my own home never lost power, and even though my workplace seems to have had a few short outages overnight the other night, we had full power for the workday, so we more or less carried on as normal.  My little redbuds look a bit raggedy, but made it through, as did the figlet (hooray!) and my other plants.

The most shocking survival is the fact that the magnolia tree just next door made it through the storm.  To understand why this is such a shock, you should first have a look at a healthy magnolia tree:

Notice the luxurious, thick growth of healthy, dark-green leaves.  Magnolias are much-loved, of course, because they produce beautiful, creamy flowers all over, just about the whole warm season:

Now take a look at the tree next door. It looks slightly different than that first image.....

I have no earthly idea what ails that poor tree, but so far nothing has been able to finish the poor thing off and put it out of its misery.  My one colleague (readers may remember him as Super Sociable Guy) dubbed this tree "the Charlie Brown magnolia" for its resemblance to, well, this:

I think the analogy is fitting, don't you?

Note for those who don't get the "landmass" reference:  When the path of Isaac had yet to be determined, there was evidently a commentator on The Weather Channel who discussed a possible hit on Mobile, and a possible hit on New Orleans, and in the process dismissively referred to the territory in between (also known as Mississippi) as "the landmass in the middle".  This on the near-anniversary of Katrina, no less, which was devastating to the MS Gulf Coast.  The indignation on Facebook was epic.

The Social Network

Yes, for a while this was me....

I've generally been sort of reluctant to get heavily involved in social media, for a number of reasons.  I wouldn't say I'm an especially public person, especially about the things that mean the most to me.  I also grew up in the era just before "Web 2.0" really became widespread (I still remember when Facebook only accepted registrations from a .edu email), so I had "old fashioned" ideas about friendship being something that happens face-to-face between people that see one-enother frequently in real life.  Only gradually did I come to appreciate the ability of the web to keep a person connected to old friends now-distant, or to connect one with new people who had shared interests.

It was also hard to ignore the familiar litany of privacy and security concerns that go along with social networking.  Is it really safe to let the world know where you are, what your routine is, and what things you're involved with?  Do I really feel like sharing my patterns and preferences with companies that will bombard me with advertising?  Most anyone I've been around who is involved with any sort of network security regards social networking as the Root of All (security) Evil. 

Lately, however, I've really picked up posting on facebook, added a proper Google+ account, and (as we can see) have started blogging again.  On the professional side, I've even brushed up a LinkedIn account, which seemed to be a good idea for networking purposes.

So far, it's been fun.  I've seen some updates from friends, shared my own updates and enjoyed receiving comments and "likes" in return.  I'm still a little ambivalent about it in some ways.  I don't want to "live" on Facebook and not have a life, or become dependent on social media for validation.  So in a way it is a bit hard to pin down exactly why I chose to dive in, and why I chose to do so now.  Sure, I've had a Facebook account for quite a while, but I really didn't use it much and barely checked it at all.  Well, I have to confess that there was a brief spate where I got sucked in by the games, but that got old pretty quick.  Then I went right back to ignoring Facebook. 

I suppose my new embrace of the Social Internet is in part to do with the fact that it is hard to find a lot of like-minded, reasonably-educated people to hang out with fact-to-face where I live.  My colleagues are wonderful, and I do consider some of them good friends, but it seemed to be important to move in a broader circle than that.  Luckily, I feel like I've found some of that wider circle, but many of them live an hour or so away, and a few in particular share extensively on Facebook, so it is the best way to stay connected with them.  I admit that it also feels nice to also be back in touch with some of my good friends from previous days.

I guess only time will tell how everything will work out, but for right now I am really enjoying myself, and I hope to continue to stay connected.  So, I wave hello across the electronic airwaves, and say "welcome" to passers-by.  I'll be seeing you in cyberspace.