Sedges in Snow

I don’t know exactly what goes into a painting. Whatever my “process” is, it’s as mysterious to me as to anyone else. I do know that since July, painting has been all but impossible for me. Covid brain is a real thing. I found it very difficult to hold an idea. It was as if parts of my brain just wouldn’t connect to other parts. I did do a painting in there somewhere, sunflowers with acrylic using a palette knife. I did that painting to try out the knife (I only have one) and to have something to hang in the show at the museum. I liked it a lot, and it seemed to prevision something changed in Martha the Painter. I wasn’t sure I could paint at all which is why I used the knife. I knew I didn’t know how to use a palette knife. It’s a simple painting of a common scene; nothing fancy but friendly and likable. I could also paint this in a very short time so there wasn’t the challenge of maintaining the image in my mind.

Last Summer acrylic on panel, painted October, 2022

What makes a painting, for the painter, anyway, might be more than the result. For me it is.

I love painting more than anything else I do. It’s just a wonderful thing to me, engrossing, intriguing. All of my paintings have been experiments because each one changes me and moves me to a different place along whatever might be my personal painting trajectory. I like that journey. Paint is part of it — just that, paint itself — and the image in my mind is another part. Doing the work is a pathway I’ve never traveled. I’m not sure I can explain this clearly because it’s not a word thing.

I think of the painters in the past, and I’m sure some of them must have loved painting. I think Turner must have. Kandinsky. Georgia O’Keefe definitely loved it. The jubilation in van Gogh’s work says to me he probably loved it, too. Back in the days when painting was a trade more than an ‘art’ those guys must have loved it, too, even though it meant a lot of hard work and the development of far more skills than painters today need to know.

I have an amazing book, On Divers Arts. That’s “diverse” not divers, but anyway. It’s by a guy, a priest, who’s writing under the name “Theophilus,” friend of God. His friendship with God is real. It’s not just that he is a priest, but also because of the way he regards all the material he works with. It would be a different blog post to go into that, so I won’t. But I share his feelings. Paint itself is a miracle.

Theophilus’ mission in writing the book was to pass down to the future all the things he knew about making art for a church and it’s practically everything — from pigments for the wall and manuscripts to the lead that holds stained glass in windows and the glass itself. It was written in the 13th century. I have found it very inspiring even though I don’t understand most of the technical instruction. The most inspiring part to me is the dedication where Theophilus explains to the person reading his instruction that the act of creating something is partaking in a little shred of the divine through physical gifts that have been passed to him through time. It feels that way to me.

For the past few days I’ve been really painting. It’s been the good stuff where I didn’t know where I was going and had to completely let go. All I had was a day week before last when Bear and I rushed out to the Refuge to catch the snow before it quit falling. We walked into a day unlike any I had ever seen. Bear and I wandered through a mystery.

Yesterday, when I finished this, I felt I’d painted that beautiful snowy afternoon.

FYI this is really just a painting of snow, fog and sedges. It’s not symbolic of anything. You’re welcome to see anything you want in the image, just don’t tell me 😀

It’s oil on acrylic primed linen canvas. The paint is Gamblin’s Flake White Replacement, a titanium based white designed to mimic lead white. Indian yellow, lapis ultramarine, and Gamblin Portland Gray. Gamblin is a paint company in Oregon. Most of their paint uses safflower oil rather than linseed oil because it doesn’t yellow over time but to make it true to the original paint, the flake white replacement uses linseed oil. The lapis ultramarine is from Daniel Smith. Indian yellow is very luminous, truly, and I chose it because there was no other color that day so the sedges seemed lit from the inside which, in a way, they were, holding summer’s sunlight in their persistent stems.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2023/02/06/rdp-monday-fancy/

Thought I’d Write About Dogs for a Change

Yesterday was day three of the Teddy T. Dog Transformation Workshop in which Teddy is made over from the land-demon from hell into a responsive, well-adjusted, adorable little guy who doesn’t try to kill his human.

Not that Teddy tried to kill me but a little melodrama doesn’t hurt a blog post that will inevitably be like many others I’ve written.

We had a great walk, again, with minimal fighting of the Halti. I realized that the connection between the leash and the Halti was heavy for such a little dog and when we got home I set up a new system using a lighter leash with a different connector. It worked. I also began training Teddy to put his nose into the Halti. He’s getting it.

On our walk, Teddy was great. It felt as if there was nothing on the end of the leash. When I got home I gave some thought to Teddy vs. Bear. First, dogs don’t really mature “intellectually” until they’re 3 years old or so. Teddy is just 4. Bear did most of the early doghood education. She house trained him and taught him the routine of Casa di Martha. But there is no way she could teach him how to walk on a leash safely with me.

Dogs like Bear are famous for their intuition. Training Bear was no work at all. She picked up most things from Dusty T. Dog who was very well-trained. Besides my work with him, during the six weeks I rehabbed from my first hip surgery (2007) he stayed with a professional trainer where he learned, among other things, to walk at heel without a leash.

Beyond that, Bear can sense what’s going on with me. It’s pretty amazing but true. The livestock these dogs are bred to protect aren’t “teaching” the dogs anything. The dogs are learning from each other if there are more than one and from the livestock themselves. Most of the time they aren’t even near “their” human. Bear learned to walk with me from walks with Dusty (who didn’t need a leash) and from me. I understand that Bear wasn’t bred to be a house dog. I get who she is, and I’m happy to stand there while she smells things, and she’s happy to stand there while I stare into the Big Empty thinking about how strange and beautiful it is. I think it would be a pretty maddening walk for others to share, even a little dog.

There’s not much snow left out there for me to crunch my way through. As my little dog walked beside me (!!!!) I thought of snow and crunch and how we learn words. There are words like “crunch” that always bring up the moment I learned the word and the activity that goes with it. My brother and I walked to school every day. One day my dad asked me (maybe I was in 2nd grade) “Hey MAK, I used to walk to school too. I love the way the snow crunched when I walked. Do you notice that?”

I was bewildered. To me “crunch” required something different from snow. Cellophane paper crunched, for that matter, paper crunched when you balled it up, or hard candy crunched between your teeth, or potato chips were crunchy. Snow??? But my dad was right most of the time. I said, “When it freezes on top?”

“No, honey, fresh snow. Bill Kelly (his best friend) and I used to walk across Pioneer Park (Billings, MT) to school and the snow crunched. Listen sometime, OK?”

The requirements for snow crunch? Fresh, dry snow has the best crunch of all. But every time it happens, I have this conversation with my dad. I was taught to notice that.

I was no different from Teddy. I had to be told things. I responded to what I was told and, clearly, remembered it. Bear, on the other hand? She seems to have been born knowing almost everything.

In other news, the sweet aroma of linseed oil again fills the house. I started a painting yesterday. I haven’t done anything in there (studio) since early last summer. When I got Covid in late June, and then long Covid, I couldn’t hold an idea or image in my mind long enough to imagine how to paint it. It was actually worse than that; I couldn’t imagine even how I would paint something. BUT the cloudy, foggy, gray, lightless day out there last week seems to be where I’m starting.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2023/02/02/rdp-thursday-crunch/

And Yet ANOTHER Walk With Polar Bear Yeti T. Dog

It’s alleged that the cranes will come earlier this year because of a lack of food down there at Bosque del Apache in New Mexico. If they do, they’ll be here a while as there is no open ground at their next stop. In advance of the influx of Crane Tourists and the 40th Anniversary Crane Festival of Song and Story, Bear and I headed out for a walk yesterday even though the wind blowing from the southwest did not demur, but blasted like a MOFO. It was blowing so hard it seemed to suck my breath away, but probably it was just blowing at me so hard I couldn’t exhale. I’ve been out there in heavy winds before, but yesterday was a little different.

As I fought the wind, I thought “Chinook.” My friend in Wyoming could use a wind like that with her sheep out in deep snow. The situation is dire. Deep snow has covered the ground so the sheeps’ usual winter grazing is inaccessible and food — for the sheep, the dogs and the men caring for them — has had to be trucked in. The road is dangerous in winter and there have been numerous wrecks. You can read about it on her blog, Ladder Ranch.

“The warm wind kept blowing
…like a low chant from the land
or like the flurry of far wings…
lapping up the snow…
until the whole body of earth
lay brown and breathing
except for the topknots of buttes
and, away and away,
the high float of mountains…
Chinook…
Promise of Spring.”

A.B. Guthrie, Jr., from These Thousand Hills.

As happens, when we turned around with our backs to the wind, the day felt completely different. Bear found a patch of snow with some appealing scents to roll in. I studied the light changing on distant Mt. Herard. The wind was blowing snow over the Sand Dunes at the base of the mountain. I tried a photograph (featured photo), but the phone does not really have a powerful telephoto lens so it looks like a paint by number painting but you might get the idea.

As I photographed Mt. Herard I saw my reflection in my phone screen. I very very very seldom take selfies because I prefer the illusion to the reality of my appearance, but yesterday it was just too funny.

Bear is pretty well trained, but we’re doing a refresher course. Taking each dog out separately means Bear doesn’t get half a walk; she gets the whole thing to herself. I’m helping her understand that so she’s not in a rush to get to the scents. I don’t know if she understands the theory behind this, but it doesn’t matter. Theories might be for humans. For Bear the reality is we aren’t in a hurry any more because no over-enthusiastic, passionate, little land demon is pulling us. She’s getting it. I realized that yesterday when she stopped in front of me, leaned against me, and wouldn’t move. “OK Bear. We really do have all day.” I swear, she sighed.

I have had a couple of happy blips in my life as an artist. Last week a man in Tennessee did the research needed to find me. He’d bought notecards from my defunct Etsy shop two years ago and wanted more. Yesterday I learned that Colorado Central Magazine wants to run my painting of the Cranes on a Windy Day with the article instead of the photos I submitted from the festival’s media kit. 😊

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2023/01/31/rdp-tuesday-demur/

More Quotedium Musing…

After a night of pretty much no sleep (why?) here I am again with the coffee, the dogs, the rawhide pencils and the word for today is recharge. Boy, that hit a chord, but I have no idea how to effect that — though I could definitely use it. (Another gulp of coffee.)

A few days ago I woke up and realized that the long covid had finally gone. It was a very strange feeling. Little by little over the past six months — that monster has finally completely wandered off.

But now what? I feel a little disoriented, awakening in a different world.

I started cleaning out/up the studio. Not with anything particular in mind. I have no inspiration and the paints are very very very cold, sort of like cold butter or margarine. My studio isn’t heated and it really is as cold as a refrigerator in there. I have a glimmer of a painting in the back of my mind and I think it will probably happen. It will be a landscape, of course. I sense it will have a backstory, though. It won’t be “just” a landscape. I think it’s going to be a picture of my life from last July to, well, more or less, now.

I keep wondering why I paint at all since everything just ends up packed carefully in boxes in the garage, but whatever. I like to paint. I could either work harder to find a gallery or accept that I’m painting things to box up and put in the garage. To be fair, though, a couple are wrapped carefully and kept in the spare bedroom.:-) My house is small; the walls are old-school lath and plaster. Hanging something is complicated AND the walls a pretty full anyway. One of the paintings needs a frame. That will happen when I’m paid for reading the books sometime this spring.

ChatGPT would say (of itself) that it’s designed to do what it does, so it does it. I guess I can look at painting the same way. It’s what I do; maybe I was designed to paint. 😀

Yesterday my neighbors and I met at E’s house for a tea party that turned out to be a birthday party for me. E made cheesecake for the event and gave me a pair of beautiful handmade wool socks. I haven’t really hung out with anyone for the past several weeks other than interviewing people. I’ve been reading books and writing an article oh yeah and getting sucked into ChatGPT. For various other reasons, the three of us haven’t been able to get together since before Christmas.

So… here’s hoping we all get the recharge we need so we can…

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2023/01/25/rdp-wednesday-recharge/

Gone to the Dogs

Another intense week draws to a close but I KNOW better than to complain about it. It could be a LOT more intense and at least as bad. Yesterday I did the 15 questions, one of which was What are you most looking forward to in 2023? I responded that I had no idea and that, “…it’s all big crapshoot.”

The author of the questions didn’t agree that it’s a crapshoot. That’s OK, but I look back on this year and I could NEVER have predicted anything that happened and NONE of it was anything I looked “forward” to. It seemed that things just happened, mostly randomly. As far as I recall the only thing I looked forward to in 2022 was the arrival of the Sandhill Cranes. I can say the same for 2023, but I’m in no hurry. Soon after they leave, the deer flies arrive.

The past couple of years have shaken us all up, I think. Certainly they’ve shaken me up to the point where I’m afraid even to write something on the calendar like it’s going to happen.

I ended up going to the little art show at the museum. Luckily, I got there after the “crowds” had gone. It was quiet, and I felt, pretty safe from the boogie monsters. The fiddle player was there with his dog, Lola. Lola was actually the draw — I saw a little video of Johnny playing the fiddle, and his dog walked through the frame. I’d heard about Lola at the fancy dinner, so I cleaned up (somewhat) and headed out. Lola is a great dog. It was worth the trip. Not just Lola, but the continual sweet surprise of this community. I will never, never get used to it.

Louise, the former director, used to clear out the museum exhibits and turn the museum into a gallery. This was fantastic. The museum has gallery lighting and big, white walls. Lyndsie chose not to do that. It doesn’t affect where I hang my paintings, but it makes the paintings look like just another museum exhibit and people can’t get close to them to look at them. People LIKE to do that. It’s funny, but I don’t really care. I care enough to notice, but not enough to object. In fact, I don’t object. That old saw about “choosing your fights”? Well I understand it now. That’s not my fight. I know Lyndsie had to advocate with the county on behalf of local artists. I don’t know everything that happened in the last days of Louise other than it wasn’t pretty. I love Louise and I like Lyndsie, but most of all, I appreciate the museum. That is my “job” description. “Hi, my name is Martha and I support the museum.” One thing I would like to do in 2023 is find something to do with my paintings. I don’t know what that would be, but I think it might involve driving. Ha ha…

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2022/12/11/rdp-sunday-hang/

Meandering Blog Post about My Dilettante Life

In an effort to overcome Covid brain I’ve been doing languages on Duolingo, a free online language program. I don’t like it, but 1) it’s free 2) I have to concentrate. Multi-tasking is (as far as I can tell) the big challenge right now, something highlighted (why not high lit?) by having written the same thing five separate times as I was trying to label my paintings at the museum the other day. Someone was talking to me as I was trying to write — well, print. We won’t mention that I’d already written the labels correctly only moments before, but couldn’t find them (18 inches away from my hand).

I started with Spanish, my best foreign language. It was kind of fun to move ahead from where I’ve been for 50 years. Then, to challenge myself, I turned to Chinese. That was strange. Chinese ideograms were always easy for me to recognize, but not on Duolingo. I have no way to know if it’s my brain or the way the program has decided to “write” them. Also, the program presents Chinese the way it presents alphabet languages which is a little strange, too. But I honestly can’t tell if it’s strange or my brain is strange. And, since my Chinese is primarily directly out of daily life, the practice conversations seemed strange. But then, I never lived in a place where people speak Mandarin, so I don’t really know. Most of the ambient Chinese in my life was in Cantonese — which I don’t speak or understand well. I spoke Mandarin in Guangzhou, but it wasn’t until I visited Hangzhou that I had an actual conversation in it.

It’s funny but even thought mosquitoes were ubiquitous, I never learned to say “mosquito” in any Chinese dialect. I like the word best in Italian, “zanzara.” It sounds like a mosquito sounds. Italian is my second best foreign language but practicing THAT on Duolingo is incredibly noisoso.

I’m a dilettante in everything, the kind of person who walks around in the shallow part of a lake and imagines she’s an Olympic swimmer.

As I was writing Christmas cards, I was contacted by a woman I met at a conference — the SISSI Conference– Society for the Interdisciplinary Study of Social Imagery — really fun, very eclectic, conference. SISSI is long gone. We met what, ten or eleven years ago? She was giving a paper on Goliardic poetry which was mostly sung and written in Latin in the Middle Ages. I guess that’s pretty obscure but it’s right up my alley. When I saw the write up in the program I really wanted to meet her. She’s a classics teacher at Purdue. We had so much to talk about — it was as if we were old friends who hadn’t seen each other in a long time. She’s NOT a dilettante. She can speak and read several iterations of Greek and Latin. She has worked on many translation projects on manuscripts I dream of even just SEEING.

I was giving a paper on the Medieval Leper. I think we might have been the only two medieval topics in the whole show. Anyway, they scheduled us for the same session. I was sitting outside the session room, waiting for my session to begin, reviewing my stuff, and I saw her. She walked up to me, and asked if I were in the next session in that room. I said I was. Then I realized who she probably was, based on the program. I said, “Are you Liz Mercier? I really wanted to meet you!” She was so surprised and told me no one had ever really wanted to meet her. We struck up an instant friendship. I loved her paper and if I ever return to the story of Benedetto, Michele and Gaspar the donkey it’s all because of what I learned from her. Anyway, we both miss SISSI and our annual meet-ups and listening to each other expound on little-known and possibly irrelevant topics.

Anyway, I realized that Covid brain — which is either slowly receding or I’m getting used to it — is worse when I’m nervous, tired, or have been over-stimulated. Both were the case yesterday after all the events of Monday. I found myself struggling with many things that should not be a struggle.

Last night as I fought insomnia (thanks Covid brain), I was thinking that maybe the solution to the painting phobia might be small paintings like those I painted when I first got the natural pigments and didn’t know how they’d work or when I first started doing oil paintings again after not doing any during the forty years since high school.

That painting happened because my stepson and his wife gave me a canvas for Christmas. I loved that present, and the painting was surprisingly successful so I kept at it. Here it is.

A herd of red Angus cattle lived across the street from me and they liked to bunch up against the fence and watch me and the dogs. Their pasture was grass and oak trees with a few boulders interspersed. I liked them a lot.

I kept at it, doing small paintings because paint is expensive and surfaces are also expensive and we won’t talk about frames. The first oil painting I ever sold was one of the cows. It’s the featured photo, 5 x 7. My next door neighbors came to the little art and craft fair at the townhall and bought it, well my neighbor’s wife bought it for her husband for Christmas. I guess the moral of the story is just go try, dammit, Martha.

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WordPress’ daily prompt is “Do you have a favorite place you have visited? Where is it?” Here’s my answer. Zürich. It’s in Switzerland.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2022/12/07/rdp-wednesday-mosquito/

Another Wonderful Day

Big day yesterday. After my internal conniption fit, I succeeded doing the brave thing. Then I took my four paintings to the museum to hang. As it happened, “my” nails were still in the walls from last year so it was easy, especially because Lyndsie did the the actual hanging, great since I couldn’t find the step ladder. The only bad thing was that when I was writing the titles of my works and prices on my business cards to hang beside the paintings, I wrote the same one 5 times. THAT is Covid brain. THAT is the brain, eye, hand thing that has made me scared to paint. When I saw what I was doing, I laughed, because it IS funny, but it wasn’t funny. It’s frightening. You think, “What if that’s me forever and it gets worse?” AND I’d already written those cards, but I wasn’t sure I had because I couldn’t find them. It happened that Lyndsie moved them, not far away. If I’d looked a little I’d have seen them, but I didn’t. True, I was a little adrenaline pumped from having done the brave, scary thing, but that wasn’t the WHOLE why for that bizarreness… Here are three of my paintings.

When I arrived I saw an old guy (older than me) coming my way. I said “Good morning,” he grunted. “Hmmm,” I thought, and shrugged. Later I learned his name is John. He had never shown his work before. He had about 15 vivid watercolors, pretty nice work, and he turned out to be a very nice guy. Turns out he lives at Homelake, the veterans home that was built here a long time ago for Civil War Veterans. He was so excited to show his work to me. So cool.

Then, another local artist came in — Laura Lunsford — a woman I have always wanted to know better. I walked up to her to say hi and she took my hand. She’s 85. She makes dolls — not normal dolls, but sculptures, really fun and beautiful sculptures with fabric. Other things, too. Her husband — who’s 92 — was bringing in boxes of her things. We ended up in a long conversation about everything — including China! Turns out a person (son?) in their family taught in China, also, married a Chinese woman, long story but that was fascinating. The thing about this place, we might not see people for a year because the “neighborhood” is so far flung. 40,000 people in an area as large as Connecticut…

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Lyndsie, the new museum director, bought one of my paintings and left me minding the store while she went to the atm. I made her look at the painting (it was boxed) before I took off with her money. She loves it and was patient with me when I told her about what the paints were made of. Actually, more than patient. Her boyfriend loves rocks and knowing that actual lapis was used to paint Mt. Blanca? Wonderment. “I can’t wait to tell Justin!”

I finally took off for home. When I turned into the road leading to the bank, I saw the little old Hispanic guy who lives nearby was pushing a grocery cart, heading home with food for the week. He’s so small, the cart was nearly as tall as he was. I did a u-y and said, “You want a ride?” He loaded the groceries into the back and I brought him home. He lives in what can only be called the “projects” of Monte Vista — an old motel now apartments. I’ve given him a ride before. I like him. I like the way he talks to my dogs when he walks down my alley.

Finally home, I got Bear alone and we headed to the Big Empty. It was very beautiful — there are fronts hitting the San Juans that may or may not make it over that high-mountain rain shadow. It was wonderful seeing them attempting to crest the mountains and the various atmospheric forces working to keep that from happening. EVERYTHING is written in the skies of the San Luis Valley. The light was beautiful, December light, the low sun and the clouds. Bear got to smell, track and leave scent markings for an hour and I did what I do that might be the equivalent — though for me it’s less about leaving graffiti — pee, in Bear’s case — telling the world I was there than seeing what the world has to say to me.

What did it say? Well, of course, I took the brave thing out there with me to think about, to confer with the great mind. At the very least, doing anything LESS than the scary thing would be unkind. Simple. The light across the Big Empty was very clear about that.

In other news, apparently WP is now posting a daily prompt and calling it that, It was on my new post when I opened it this morning but I found it also on “home.” Well, hmmmmm… Five things I’m good at?

Typing. Listening. Endeavoring. Being outdoors. Hanging out with dogs.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2022/12/06/rdp-tuesday-conniption/

Two Paintings

I’ll be hanging four paintings in the upcoming holiday show at the Rio Grande County Museum along with these two, Last Summer Acrylic on panel and The Rio Grande in Late Fall oil on oil primed linen canvas.

GREAT Day!

Yesterday was a sterling day.

First, it snowed, a really pretty soft snow that I would have loved to watch fall, but it was in the wee hours and I was sleeping. It’s wonderful to wake up to a surprise. I hurried through my coffee and blog post, found Bear looking at me wistfully in the kitchen, closed the back door to keep Teddy the Incorrigible inside, leashed my dog and headed out. This wasn’t going to be a dog walk, but a snow communion with Bear. I think Teddy understood that because he just shrugged and jumped up on the sofa.

Fog was lifting from the road as the sun heated it. Fog still hung low over the mountains — fog or clouds. More like clouds to me, beautiful clouds touching the earth. A Great Horned Owl was watching from the higher branches of a cottonwood beside a farm house.

We arrived to find a paradise of untouched snow (except for some tracks of foxes, deer and scurrying creatures). The clouds were lifting slowly, their shadows dragged gently across the frozen, snow-covered pond.

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I have never smelled clouds before, that I know of, anyway, but as they lifted, I did, clouds and fresh snow.

Bear and I never hurry and we took the little trail Bear loves in real slow motion. There were very few tracks yet. Even the hunters and hunted had not been out. A red tail hawk was perched in a tree, watching, hoping for breakfast. I hadn’t had any either, but mine was waiting at home in the refrigerator.

Once on the main road, there were more tracks, deer and fox. I had to explain to Bear that we couldn’t go after them. I wished we could, in a way, remembering a time when my dogs and I felt free to track things, but this place is not those places and I’m glad of it. It wouldn’t be this place if people could trample around in it. It’s a small sanctuary from, well, us.

Some disturbing/interesting tracks in the snow were my footprints. Wow.

“Look Martha!!!”

Graduate of the Ministry of Silly Walks

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And THEN….. When we got home I had to face the next thing. I had started a painting,and I was going at least try to paint it. I wanted to try the palette knife, but when I looked at what I have of those tools I saw I don’t have a selection. I I’m not even sure where they came from. I have inherited tools and paint from friends. Were they Michael’s? Sally’s? Alex’? I don’t know, only that I never bought one.

I had to do research into WTF they are. Most of them are (as I thought by looking at them) essentially putty knives used for mixing paint. Only two were meant for painting. I don’t mix paint on my palette. I “mix” it on the painting, so the putty knife ones are pretty useless to me (right now). The two painting knives were/are very dirty with dried paint. I did what I could to clean the cleaner of the two because (I learned) I needed paint with the edges. I managed to get the tip cleaned off and the edges to some extent. It was good enough for an experiment, so I went at it. I haven’t looked at it this morning, but yesterday it was…

So much fun!!!!!

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2022/11/28/rdp-monday-sterling/

Here We Go!!!

Here’s my first real painting attempt with a palette knife. Here’s what I’ve learned. Knives are easier to clean than brushes. I’m using acrylic and with acrylic — and the knife — I have to work very fast.

The painting I’m working on will have something MORE to it, but I can’t paint it until all of this is completely dry. I may use a brush for the main subject, I don’t know, but this palette knife is wonderful and a LOT of fun.

I decided to use a palette knife since I don’t know how to use one and I can’t possibly get hung up on detail or doing well. If I do well, it’ll be luck as much as skill. This was a choice since I’m unsure of myself right now. My brain hasn’t worked to paint since Covid, but I think it is starting to. Using a tool I don’t know anything about is really helpful. 

I’ve painted a similar painting before — another iteration, a different place, a different subject, a long time ago, a small oil painting. Not these plants, but similar, along a stream in the Cuyamaca Mountains in CA.

The thing about nature is it is ONE thing adapting the species to the land.