Buzzing with blue fingers

I've come home with blue fingers, and that's always a good sign of an enjoyable day. Well actually, they're blue, red, yellow, purple and white fingers, and I'm hoping that it'll wash off with some success......

I've been to an art workshop today, painting contemporary landscapes in acrylics with a palette knife, so very messy and such fun!!! The tutor first got us to team up with another person there, and create a piece of art one mark at a time, each taking turns to mark the paper in ONE movement only, turn by turn, each only using any two colours we chose - criss-crossing or smearing the other marks on the paper if we chose, or spraying it, or any other way we wanted to make a painting between us. Afterwards we talked about it, and the reactions to it fascinated me - some people HATED doing it as they couldn't THINK in an abstract way, some hated the fact that the other person "SPOILT" their marks, some HATED it because it was abstract and loose and they couldn't think in that way. How very interesting, and surprising, I felt. But then I'm used to doing abstracts and hadn't realised that some people can't think in that way. I liked the way that the fact that I had to wait for my colleague to make her mark, made me think more about my mark, it made it more controlled, and yet part of the control of the painting was out of my hands (and every body elses) by the manner of the creation of the art - most interesting in a psychological way!!!

When we got to start painting a proper landscape, we followed the way the tutor showed how he painted in a very loose style and encouraged everyone else to do so, to the point that we didn't even draw anything before hand, but put paint straight onto the dampened paper and left it to see what it did. The only control we had was to apply torn masking tape as a rugged horizon, that was immediately removed after the first colour was applied, and then sprayed with water to soften the edges. We worked on our pictures, and I got quite into it, but sort of made it up as I went along, as I wasn't exactly sure how I wanted it to look until I started working with the loose effects on my paper, but I put on lots of colour and slowly worked through where the focal point was with my three trees in the landscape, contrasts, lost and found edges, colour scheme and  the over all design of it.

At the end of the session, the tutor got us all to stand our half finished work against the wall and view them all together, to see how we'd all progressed, and he went along them one by one to comment on each one. When he got to mine, which happened to be the last one, he RAVED over it, the "exquisite" effect of it, and took it around to the rest of the class to show it to them. It took me aback abit, as I hadn't expected that reation, but was obviously delighted too by the way he loved it so much! Aw, thankyou!!!!

Afterwards as we packed our stuff up I went to him to thank him for the inspirational day and had a good chat about being a professional artist and standard of workmanship. He didn't know anything about me or my art so we exchanged business cards and he said he'd look at my website when I mentioned I was an erotic artist (I didn't mention that I already do abstract acrylics or the subject matter, but when he finds my "Fantasy Fannies" he'll realise!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  LOL)

And if that wasn't enough, on the way out of the hall, literally in the doorway, I bumped into a woman who was coming in to set up for a party that evening, who I'd not seen since last April when she commissioned me to paint her daughters horse, Elliot,  for a surprise birthday present for her - she was absolutely delighted to see me, hugged me in greeting and told me how delighted the daughter was with the painting, and had burst into tears when she saw it. And then introduced me to her daughter, whe was with her, who also told me how delighted she was with the painting, and how well I had captured him and his personality, so that made it doubly good!

So all in all,  I was on a total "high" on the way home!!!!! A verrryyyy Happy Bunny!!!! YAY!!!!