Thursday figure and some quick-paints

Last night's two-hour figure. I really tried to get the portrait in there, and hey what!? I nailed it. That's her. I think it helped that it was a familiar face.

I've also been trying to get back into the daily painting thing. I'm a big believer in painting small and often. I read this book called "Art and Fear" a year or two ago, and the author tells a story about a pottery class where the teacher broke the class into two groups. To one group he said, "You will be graded on one pot. So try all semester to make a perfect pot." And to the other group he said, "You will be graded on how many pots you produce. So make as many pots as you can." At the end of this experiment, those who were in the "quantity" group also had produced the best pots. 

There's just something about actually doing something and doing it often that is really important to improving. And something I've come to realize (over and over again) is that no one is going to do this for me. Teachers are VERY helpful and their guidance is invaluable. But when it comes down to it, it's up to me to do it--to implement their advice--to actually DO the thing. So I'm trying to practice more. That first kitty there was a request from my two-year-old and the cat held still for all of about 2 seconds, so you can see my generic mental representation of a kitty here (and it got signed "Mama" so, you know--my boy loves it ;). And neither of these was more than 15 minutes or so. Also, that's just a plain old $5 cigar box. I added a tripod mount to the bottom, and put some push pins in the back to keep the lid from flopping all the way open. Fancy, fancy. But the nice thing is I can keep the paints in there for a few days, and it's super easy to just grab and paint with very little time ;) Also, I get these 12-packs of centurion oil primed linen panels from Dick Blick (correction--I get my panels from Jerry's. Sorry) in 4x6 and 5x7 sizes. They're pretty cheap, and I don't feel too bad about wasting the .89 cents I spent on them with quick paintings (and I can always wipe the painting off if I feel like it). All in the name of practice and consistency.

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