Art Morning
I admit I’m cheating a little bit today. I actually made two pieces: one for today and tomorrow. It just worked out that way. At least now I’ll be posting two days in a row which I’m not that good at.
You see, this morning I went to a community art gathering that people from my church hold about once a month. Anyone is welcome. All they do is come together, and do their own art project in the company of other artists. Today, one person was making a quilt for her room while a guy was making a graduation card for a friend. Then one person was drawing an abstract charcoal drawing of a pregnant woman. I decided to paint a water color painting about my trip to Mt. Baldy. While doing our projects, we would talk about family, jobs, jokes, and various other topics. We would complete the morning by eating eggs, waffles, mimosas, and Squirt. I would say it was a nice morning.
While I waited for my painting to dry so to add more coats, I would draw this typographic piece I came up with. You’ll be seeing that work tomorrow.
The painting I made was based on a conversation I had with my friend on a backpacking trip I went on a couple of weeks ago. It was a two day trip up the mountain, travelling only 9 miles but 4000 ft in elevation. We went up Saturday, stayed the night, and went back down on Sunday. When I woke up on Sunday morning, my friend was laying in a hammock staring at the trees. I asked him what he was doing and he ignored my question to ask his own. He asked me out of all the trees in the forest, which one best described me.
I picked this one tree in the middle of a patch of three trees. It was the tallest of the trio. Surrounding the patch though was even more gigantic trees. I compared the trees to perspective. When you compare my tree to its group, its the biggest, strongest, best. But when you compare it to the whole forest, its puny. On the hike, I was definitely one of the strongest hikers but that’s only because I wasn’t with any pros. We were all amateur hikers looking for a fun time. I feel the same in the design world. I’m really strong compared to the people I know (I don’t know that many other designers) but if I was surrounded by a lot more designers, I would be pitiful.
Its sad how perspective can humble you so, but maybe its exactly what we need.
As for the painting itself, I don’t think its that great. It’s really flat to me. What I love about it though is the pine needles on my front three trees. I tried a new technique where I dabbed the brush into the paper with a medium wet brush (the back trees are with a wet brush…yuck) and at an angle. I think it worked really well on these trees.
The poem’s translation:
Out of all the trees in the forest
Which one are you?
You better not pick mine.
[…] to just make random stuff. My first goal was to create a Chinese water color painting, which I posted yesterday, but the problem with those kinds of works is that they have a lot of waiting time. Water color […]
IS VERY NICE! I like the poem, too. It’s very sassy.