January 2, 2016

• Great Expectations

  There's a couple of apps that swept Facebook over the past couple of weeks purporting to show the highlights of your year, or your year in review. Both were basically just pulling up the most "Liked" photos everyone had posted over the past year. I played with the apps, but didn't post the results. My most "Liked" photos were almost all either photos I'd tagged Beth (seedsower) in, or photos from the many Wine & Canvas nights I attended in 2015. I painted at least six pictures at Wine & Canvas last year... maybe more; I'm too lazy to go in the next room and count the canvases stacked against the wall (and then adding the one in the living room and the two I gave away). I had great fun and am proud of most of the paintings. They're not great art, but they're some of the best art this art-impaired person has ever done. As much as I enjoyed all those Wine & Canvas nights, though, the painting I like best is not a product of Wine & Canvas. It's a mixed media painting I did on a fun evening with my cousins on Washington Island in Wisconsin.

   

  

  The artist who taught the class was Cindy Wunsch-Bowen. The method is easier for me than trying to make recognizable images with paint and brushes. We were each given a cup of clear glue and access to a bin filled with scraps of fabric and lace. There were also drawers filled with stickers and beads and other accessories. After gluing what we wanted onto the canvas, we brushed glue over the top, dried the canvas with a blow dryer, and began painting it. Cindy's art leans heavily toward large, fantastical birds and flowers, or abstract designs. I didn't know what to paint, so I pulled up a photo I'd taken the morning before on my cell phone and used it as the basis of my painting. We left our paintings at the studio and Cindy later coated them with clear resin. This is the only painting I've done so far that I like well enough to hang in our living room.

  I enjoyed the process of creating this painting so much that I decided it would be fun to try it on my own someday. I committed myself to it by purchasing a few canvases, several tubes of acrylic paint and a fistful of brushes in various sizes. With this background information, you will understand why I was so happy to unwrap a couple of odd Christmas gifts - a gallon of clear glue and some clear epoxy resin. There were also sponges, brushes, canvases, brush cleaner, a tabletop easel and an art box that makes me think of Mad Eye Moody's trunk in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Along with all of these gifts was the promise to convert the room off our living room (which has at various times been an office, a library, a music room and a bedroom) into a miniature art studio.

  Today, Brett began making good on that promise by purchasing a worktable and a stool. He found exactly what I wanted - a stool that swivels, is high enough for me to easily use the tabletop easel, and has a back (because my back is always killing me at the end of a Wine & Canvas night).

  

  My little studio will be done by the end of January. I have to go in and clear out some stuff, pack away a bunch of piano music and empty a dresser. I've needed to do that for a long time; the table and stool are my motivation to finally get it done. For my first solo attempt at a mixed media painting, I am going to try this scene:

  

  I'm looking forward to playing with this type of art. I'm actually looking forward to what this year will bring. I haven't felt optimistic about a new year for a very long time, but I think there will be some fun and interesting times in store for us in 2016.

  What are you looking forward to in the next year?

  • 10:57 pm
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