Last week I spent the week at Cheaha State Park with several other artists and the well known artist, Julee Hutchison as our mentor and teacher. Our goal was to learn from her and hopefully incorporate what we learned into our paintings. I never seem to "take in" all the information while on site but today I tried to reflect back on several things she taught us.
Some of her thoughts include:
Paint with passion
Take risks
Have fun
Revel in the day
Dont get discouraged - must of have miles of bad paintings behind us and often more is learned from a bad painting than a good one.
She also told us to think of our brush like a violin bow. Pressure changes are extremely important...direction of movement matter. Your brush is your instrument - a bow across strings with the same pressure and the same rhythm would make for a very boring "piece". Value - If you get the value right it really does not seem to matter about the color.
I have also heard it said, "once you say what you want to say then quit". As any of you who paint know, THAT IS SO HARD. The longer you look at your painting you see something you want to change but all those added strokes take away from the spontaneity that you created with the first strokes if they were laid down with conviction.
Then, there is the need to mix colors correctly and have warm colors and cool colors vibrate when placed next to each other.
Today I took out a picture of an old shed that was located on a farm we visited last week and I spent time mixing colors from Richard Schmid's color charts. This practice encouraged me to use colors that I do not normally reach for so it changed up my palette. I also made an effort to lay down color and leave it. When we go back over our colors again and again we create mud. So easy to do but so hard to undo.
I am pleased with the results and hope to keep on learning.
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