Loosening up

This month I signed up for a workshop taught by an artist who is a colorist that tends to paint mostly abstract. I generally take workshops where I feel I have the most opportunity to learn and grow as an artist. I felt I needed to grow in my abilities to focus more on composition and design versus trying to paint what I see. I was finding that my art was becoming too focused on the details of what I was viewing and as a result, I was becoming less creative. I thought taking this workshop with this type of artist would help.

I had recently begun painting with palette knives quite a bit lately because I found that it helped me to create a more exciting painting plus it also helped me to get away from painting the details. I loved how the paint would create those "happy accidents." It got me to become a much looser painter. Well it so happened that this artist painted with palette knives as well so I was really excited to get to learn some of her techniques also.

The class was described as a plein air class and that was another thing that attracted me to the workshop but as the class began, we found that plein air was optional and that the artist basically had us create a painting from our imagination for the lesson. This was not my normal mode of operation but I went with it. I was so surprised at how naturally I took to this. As we live our lives, we have so much visual matter stored up in our minds. It was very easy to come up with a design just drawing from those memory banks (and at my age, there is a ton of data). I was more focused on the techniques that we were being taught as well as just the design and color of the piece. It was a very freeing experience and one that I was excited about.

The first painting in this blog is the piece I worked on during the workshop. When I got back to my own studio, I began to work a couple of other pieces in the same manner - from memory. These were great exercises to stimulate creativity and become a better artist - and it was just fun. They may not have been masterpieces but they definitely opened the door to better work in the future.