I decided I needed to force myself to paint. Unless it’s a priority, creative time always gets pushed to the end of the list. And it’s been a very long list lately.
The last half of the year was dedicate entirely to fighting the transmission line project that threatened eminent domain. I won’t bore you with all the details, but I know how to start a non-profit, can write a moratorium, can draft an ordinance, have grown a facebook page to over 1,200 people, have a substack dedicated to the land issues around renewable energy, and have met some really great people.
I’d like to say that the battle is over, but it isn’t. What I am trying to do though, is find some kind of balance in managing my time. Spending 8-12 hours a day on transmission line design, renewable energy pros and cons, Maine eminent domain law… isn’t sustainable. I still need to educate my children, run them to dance classes, spend time with my husband and children, work, and play.
I haven’t taken the time to paint much at all over the last 7 months, so when I saw the Strada easel challenge for January, I thought it would be a great way to get me into the habit of painting.
(Ok, actually, I thought it would be crazy to sign up for something that required me to paint (or draw) from life every single day in January. So I called my oldest daughter to either talk me out of it or sign up with me. She signed up with me, so we’re both a little bit crazy.)
For the most part, I’m so grateful to this challenge. I like some of the paintings I’ve done, but definitely not all of them. But that’s OK. The point isn’t to paint well every day, it’s to paint every day. I’m learning about brush strokes, values, color mixing, sketching, shadows, and building the habit of painting.
If you follow me on Instagram, you’ll already be familiar with these. They aren’t great, but I’m learning.
Day One: Step one – get out paints and brushes. Step two – try to remember how to paint. Seriously though, this one was hard. I decided to keep everything simple and just get it done. Trying to capture the light reflecting in the metal was tough.
Day Two: I had a red onion I was going to use for dinner and thought I’d paint it first. I wanted to try to keep this painting under 30 minutes. That didn’t happen. Also, reds and happy purples are hard to mix. Need to work on that. And yes, the yellow onion shape really was oblong.
Day Three: Definitely challenged my sketching skills. After the third time I was happy with the tube but I sketched it too high on the paper so I filled in the empty space with my painting palette. I like the yellow splotch.
Day Four: Feathers in a white pitcher. I thought I’d try to do a 20 brush stroke challenge. Then I ended up enjoying the strokes to make feathers that I kept going. Michelle Wooderson inspired this one.
Day Five: Coffee Grinder. I was losing light quickly when I started painting this. I don’t have any kind of studio or still life set up so I put the grinder in a box to try to limit how many light sources were hitting it. Better, but there was still a lot of light coming from different angles. I think it’s fun though, and kind of quirky looking.
Day Six: Pointe Shoes. These are the first pointe shoes one of my daughters wore. They’re tiny and worn. I tried to capture how worn the tips are, but again, painting in fading light is difficult. I’m going to try these again sometime because pointe shoes are beautiful.
Day Seven: Tomato! I thought I’d paint a bowl of tomatoes. Then I smartened up and decided to paint only one. The red turned out so much better this time.
Day Eight – Homeschooled Teenager, Math in the Sun – I was trying to decide what to paint and then I saw Sophie taking advantage of the sun streaming in the door. She was doing math, but then turned into a cat and took a little nap. I was really glad she put her head down. I’m not ready to paint faces.
Day Nine: Let’s call this Winter Clementines. I bought a bag of clementines and knew I wanted to paint a bowl of them. But then I saw that my children had eaten all but three. It was already dark outside, but if I wanted to paint clementines, this was my only chance. Orange shadows are hard to mix.
Day Ten: Oil Lamp and Bible – I didn’t think I’d get a painting done for day 10. Church, and then a long meeting, and reading proposed legislation, and writing testimony against proposed legislation, and preparing to fight this new round of eminent domain battles, and then evening service at church (so glad we went), and suddenly the day was almost over. I think I finished this one at 11:00 pm. I kind of like the sketchy-ness of it.
I’ll share more later. I need to get to today’s painting before it gets dark!