"keep it simple" and paint a(n) (awful) shoe. . .then go back to kindergarten. . .

This weeks homework: ". . .look at landscape, . .  keep it simple and stay in the house a bit- I said "mug and spoon" and "chair" and "shoe".  Those are your subject suggestions for this week.  Do a sketch first, think about composition, and go for it!  And I will say right now that it can be tricky to fit a shoe into a square!" 

Yes, I did a shoe. Took me about 3 hours to make this horrid thing. Frustrating. Wrong shoes? Too much thought? For sure it was too much fussing. Shoes are horrible and I did take a photo right before I was going to gesso it over. Decided to call it a triage work and add over the top and practice my neutral mixings. Ugh ugh ugh. And they aren't even Uggs. So ugh that I'm adding it at the end so it doesn't show up on the blog as the painting attached to today. 

Then went back to the basics of the stupid ellipse/cup and stupid oranges. While stupid, I like them. Why? Because they weren't assigned? They weren't assigned? I think I'm still in my 100 hours of working with the materials and media to learn their limitations and possibilities of how they work to express my whatever I'm trying to express. 

I think I'm not liking the black backgrounds. When I painted the oranges on the orange pained board I think because I was halfway there in color I had more mental freedom or mental space to start painting.  Can you believe how ugly those shoes are???????

When is it that I'm okay with my painting? When I paint with some kind of energy (of anxiety, frustration, wine?) and not on purpose? But do I want to paint cups and oranges forever? How do I move myself further? Is it to start making shoes my new cups and oranges. 

I still think maybe it's the media and how I use it. Maybe it's too wet, too dry, dries too fast or something. I'm going to try acrylic retarding medium (someday). I'm going to maybe try those same horrid shoes with watercolor or gouache or oil pastels so that I can scribble them. Such horrid shoes. But comfortable in real life. 

Lars Lerin watercolor

On Sunday I went for a long walk in the snow. I had wanted to snowshoe at Fort Snelling State Park but couldn't get out of the alley. Instead, I walked down the Greenway to the River Road and then to Lake Street and down to the Rowing Club. From there I walked upstream back to the RR bridge. 

Along the way I took many photos of snow and plants and snow on plants. I think about how I would paint those photos and what media would I use. I'm still so inspired by the winter watercolor paintings of Lars Lerin. Of grasses poking out of the snow and showing the shadows. Of a birch forest. Lars Lerin watercolors inspire me. The exhibition of his paintings at ASI two years ago is what made me decide I wanted to learn how to paint or learn how to use paint. I look forward to the day when I can express my intrinsic thoughts through painting.