As the Days Brighten

The sun is just about to start rising before 7 am here. Although we are in the grip of a week of chilling cold temperatures and still staring at last weekend’s heavy snowfall, I feel like my inner winter is turning a corner. My inner lethargy is decreasing, and I am settling down to paint earlier in the day, giving creativity a higher priority than I have managed in the last four weeks. January for me has been mostly about giving in to rest.

I only did one more state in my postcard challenge this week, Pennsylvania. Because my quilting energy is also making a comeback, I made it a barn quilt scene. These handpainted quilt blocks are common in parts of rural America. This is a relatively simple block known as Monkey Wrench or Churn Dash.

I started venturing out to a Tuesday art group at our town library when schedule permits. It provides a quiet, cat-free space of about two hours of painting time. It took several sessions and some cleanup at home to finish this 9x12” version of a scene I had painted earlier on a 4x6” postcard. The postcard was purchased by the very talented Janet Asante Sullivan, who saw it on my substack. I think the smaller version turned out better. I used acrylics, mixing most of the snow and sky with an open body white that slows the drying time.

I thought I needed a skills stretch and attempted some small (3x3”) florals. I am not good with florals in any medium, as these photos show. I did not use slow drying acrylic this time figuring I could work quickly enough on this small scale. I guess I should clean up the edges on the daisies and get a better value range on the roses. I was working with alizarin crimson and cad red, and it was so lifeless when i tried to add white to get a lighter value, so I mixed a bit of lemon yellow into cad red first, then added some white. Those flowers still look lifeless to me.

I really need to make the switch to oils, but we are short on space at present and I need a cat free room where I can open the windows in the spring to allow for ventilated work and drying.

Self-observations:

• I try to force gouache to behave like acrylics and oils and sometimes watercolor, but gouache no longer frustrates me.

• I wish acrylics behaved more like oils. I don’t like all its hard edges.

• I am content to let watercolor be watercolor and let the water work its will with the paint. I feel like I am advancing in my skills easily and plan to enter a recent watercolor in an art exhibition.

I am happy to keep gouache and watercolor in my art toolbox. Is it too early to give up on acrylics or do I just need more practice?

Should I try to do these two florals, or any florals in oils and see if I feel better about the result?

Do I need to take a class, or can I work with some decent free videos? Or just carve out a month to do small studies in oils every day, if possible?

Thanks for reading. Advice very much welcome in the comments.

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