Week 2 - PLAY

This was week 2 of my online art course, and it was PLAY week.  As we age we tend not to play anymore or very little.  We get busy with life, get serious, or too busy to play.  Go back to being five and find a swing to swing on, a skipping rope to jump with, go splash water in a lake, go tag your neighbor.  You're it!

 The concept of playing is so important in art and the creative process.  The instructor reminded me not to get so serious about painting and not to worry so much about creating a master piece but concern myself with exploring new ways of painting and listening to my intuition.  Get rid of the should’s and the should not’s in your head.  Don’t worry if it’s not ‘right’.  Don’t try to impress others with your painting.  Your painting doesn’t need to make sense.

Everything that has happened on my canvas so far is supposed to be there.  I love how the instructor says “it is a part of the story that is your painting”. 

There was a lesson on color.  Something I didn’t really need to learn as I have taught art for seven years, and have personally taught this lesson.  But the idea was to try combinations of colors as you create the canvas.  To avoid mud, it’s important to keep your cools and warms separate. 

This week it was important to play, to build on the variation of marks, to become more comfortable in how to use the tools to paint on the canvas, and finally to incorporate all colors in the same layer avoiding mud.

On the fourth day it was important that I play with value.  Value is the lightness or darkness of a hue.  Value goes from light to dark and everything in between.  So we used black and white and played, sometimes moving the black flush with the white to see what would happen.  It was obvious that the light was coming forward and the dark was receding.  It was also amazing as to how much the canvas came alive with the sharp contrast of white and black.

The final day we took color, added some water and/or glaze to it, and with our fingers, glazed over the top of random areas of our canvas.  This I loved, and I found a new color which I love.  It’s a gold and when I put it on my canvas my canvas was smiling.   It was very cool.  I also liked to put one glaze over another.  The combination of the two glazes and the marks underneath was quite spectacular. 

I felt like playing some more so with my fingers I started making more marks of lines and swirls, and dots.  I really did feel like I was playing and yes it was freeing.

There are still three more weeks to go in this course and I am sure that my canvases will look a whole lot different when I am done.  I can hardly wait to see what I create!

Anxiety in a man’s heart weighs him down, but a good work makes him glad.

Proverbs 12:25