Tag: Artists’ Way

Posted in painting

This week’s watercolor work

Posted on by Laura Kate

Hi, Friends,

When I finished the 12 week Artist’s Way course, I made a commitment to myself to follow up with 90-day self-nurturing plan. It includes a concrete plan of action to write daily, take myself on an artist’s date once a week, and explore more fully my favorite creative practices. One of these is watercolor painting.

My “date” this week was to attend a workshop at the local art association, which took place on Wednesday. It included a one hour tutorial by Tony Couch. Today I am sharing the practice pieces that I painted as a result of the workshop.

Tony talked a lot about what the landscape artist paints. He insists that we don’t paint a tree. We paint a symbol of a tree. We don’t paint water, we paint a symbol. Symbols have specific characteristics that make the objects instantly recognizable to the viewer. For example, for a deciduous tree the characteristics are shape (round crown), colors (varies with the season) and textures (expressed by the leaves and the bark)

Painting the symbol of a tree.

Painting a symbol of still water.

To practice the still water technique, I painted a scene from Iceland. It’s based on a photograph published on Unsplash – a free use site for photographers and other artists. Here is the reference photo:

I started with the sky and worked my way down to the water.

Initial washes are complete. I will come back to deepen some areas and add finishing details. This was painted on a Stonehenge paper block using a palette of Hansa yellow deep, Winsor green yellow shade, ultramarine blue, pyrrol scarlet, quinacridone red, carbazole violet, burnt umber and Payne’s gray.

Posted in Living Life Well

This Week’s Theme in Artist’s Way

Posted on by Laura Kate

The author titles Week 5 “Recovering a sense of possibility.” This chapter presents some hard questions that have me examining the ways that I put myself second and my family members first – something that I had accepted as necessary and virtuous. I learned today that this behavior can be a trap. But then, moving on from self-sacrificial actions, the Way gives me exercises to explore what I would and could do if it weren’t too selfish a thing.

The exercise, Forbidden Joys, asked me to list things that I would love to do, if I were allowed to do them. When I completed my ten things, I felt – exhilarated. Writing the list down made me smile. Reading it afterward warmed my heart. The theory is that writing about one’s forbidden joys breaks down the barrier to doing them.

Next, the Way tells me to post my list somewhere highly visible. Awwww! do I dare? After all they are Forbidden.

In the spirit of the Artist’s Way, what follows are ten things that I would love to do if they were allowed. To provide a full experience, I chose photographs illustrating my forbidden things. Half are my own photographs and half come from internet sites.

  1. Swim naked.

2. Climb onto a roof to watch the sun set.

3. Run up and down the stairs.

4. Eat chocolate cake once a week.

5. Interrupt someone who is speaking – especially when they are boring or pompous.

6. When travelling, stay the night at the finest hotel in town.

7. Have breakfast for dinner, or dinner for breakfast.

8. Take out the carpet in my studio and paint the concrete floor.

9. Pet every dog that I meet.

10. Hug every toddler that I meet.

There, that wasn’t so bad. I hope you tolerated my self-indulgence in revealing these forbidden joys. If you liked reading mine, perhaps you should try to make this list for yourself. You might just be convinced to actually do one of them.