Stan Hywet

In September on a day warm enough to make us sweat, my friend and I went to Stan Hywet.  I told you about it before, but the dividends of that trip keep paying off.  It's like the trip that keeps on giving.

We took photographs -- maybe 37 of them in my case.  They were thoughtfully taken, not helter-skelter but with some sense of balance and color.  Peg took one of the steps leading down into the English Garden.  Then at my class for class she sketched the scene with a lot of care and attention to detail. 

Then she masked in some areas that she wanted to keep white.  This is done with masking fluid that goes over the watercolor paper and seals it.  It's removable at a later time when the artist is ready. 

After that she started on the stairs and then the walls, weaving in purples and greens for shadows and moss.  The final area was in a corner where a large plant dominated the scene.  She recreated the leaves of the plant perfectly!!  When you look at the picture, it takes you right back to the English Garden, but no one would mistake it for a photograph.

Some realists achieve something akin to that -- a photograph.  While it is technically amazing, there is something missing when we don't get a hint of the artist's eye in the work.  Peg's has all of that in spades!  It is a real achievement for her in the painting that we do on Thursdays.  You might say that she has graduated!!

I was kidding the other day when I commented, "We are sure pleased with the teacher that we hired."  Of course, there is no teacher -- it's just us.  But boy, have we learned.  Trial and error sometimes, videos on the Internet, books, magazines.  It is all starting to make so much more sense. 

With acrylics, for example, you move from the dark background to the lighter in the foreground.  With watercolors it is just the opposite.  Light in the background and then successive washes and details in the darker colors. 

The painting I chose from Stan Hywet is Birch Allee.  It is a wonderful scene in fall of the birch trees leaning over the pathway, still mostly green but with dropped yellow leaves built up on the sides of the concrete path.  The birch trunks are very visible among the chaos of the leaves, lights, darks, and shadows.  It's early in the process, but so far I'm liking it a lot.

We have two more classes left before we take a holiday break.  Both of us have the usual holiday preparations to make, including cookies and shopping, wrapping and cooking.  The art work would suffer for the lack of concentration.  We'll start again in January and we can figure out how we will do this to work around the weather and my driveway.

What a wonderful plus the classes have turned out to be!  I have had a great time learning and experimenting as an artist and finally feel some confidence that I can pull something off decently well. 

Here is something really strange -- it wasn't until several years ago that I found out my mother used to paint.  I think she did watercolors too!  Isn't that crazy?  She had done a couple of landscapes and had them framed for our living room, and how I wish we still had them.  For some reason, she didn't continue on with her hobby.  Maybe she was a little like me -- she tried violin, did the watercolors, landscaping, then wood burning, and then she painted on wine bottles.  I could concoct a list something like that, but now I think maybe art will always be a part of my life, as long as I'm around.

God Bless all of you today.  Enjoy the weather.  Say a prayer for our veterans.

Karen