Since the New Year, I had a lot of thinking about dreams, goals and… what the heck was I even doing anyway?!
I guess that happens to all of us and at many points in our lives. It was the first time for me that it happened when I felt I had no good reason to question my current lifestyle. I’ve got a great job, a supportive boyfriend and enough friends to keep me busy.
As I have always been an ambitious person, it dawned on me that I relied too heavily on my job to give me the every day life satisfaction that I’ve been craving for in the past couple of months. Sometimes, your job just can’t provide that. So, after a couple of weeks of figuring that out, I suddenly had an epiphany.
I’ve had sudden ideas and inspirational thoughts come to me, but I don’t quite remember having such an “oh my god, that’s it!” moment like I quite had this time two weeks ago. A vision flashed before my eyes of me covered in paint, tongue sticking out the corner of my mouth and my hand fluttering over a canvas with concentrated strokes.
It really felt like it was meant to be. I’ve always had a fascination with art, and I really love creating, especially if it means getting messy.
So, it’s decided. I am learning to oil paint.
It’s going to be landscapes, at least to start with. This is because I often find myself framing up a beautiful scene when walking around. I’ll often stop and gaze in awe at the colours and light I see before me. I feel a total sensation of ‘zen’ when this happens. Something about the atmosphere, it just really pleases me. I’ll often take a snap on my phone, much to my boyfriends annoyance if it’s a particularly beautiful evening and he’s dying to get home!
I’ve got a book called Landscape Painting; Inside & Out by Kevin Macpherson. He includes lots of activities and ways to practice which I am very excited to try out. It helped me pick out some basic supplies, which I’ll share below.
I got a bunch of brushes as recommended by Macpherson;
- Bristle filberts 12, 8 & 4
- Bristle brights 10 & 6
- Bristle round 6
- Sable filbert 10
- Sable bright 6
- Sable round 4
I have no idea if this is a good selection, but I just got a selection of some that he mentioned. It seems like more than enough for now.
For oils, I decided to go with a brand I can buy in the store and I opted for the water mixable oils, this is so that it’s much quicker to clean. When starting out, I am going to make a giant mess. Plus, I am probabaly going to waste a lot of paint on some pretty bad paintings!
That’s also why I’ve just got one of those terrible table easels and a couple of cheap cotton canvasses. The easel is really as bad as people say. The tightening thing at the top does not work, like at all, so that’s pretty disappointing. I figured I’d get a cheap easel until I knew what kind of easel I wanted and for me, it was important to start painting as fast as possible. No good letting excuses like “but I don’t have an easel!” to stop me from getting started!
Okay, enough of the boring stuff, let’s take a look at my first crappy painting!
And oh boy, will there be more…
So, I guess some of you might be thinking it’s not too bad for a first go. But I must admit, I like to think of myself as someone that has studied art and painting throughout her life, and would have a bit better sense of things. The biggest thing that threw me off was controlling the paint. I read that beginners tend to go too thin with the paint, so I loaded up my brushes and went for it. However, being bold is one thing… controlling the bold is another!
I feel I have a good understanding of where things went downhill, and to be totally honest I am glad to have got that first one out the way! It was scary in the beginning, I even distracted myself with tidying up my art space for 2 hours before actually braving to paint. Once I did start, it felt fun but as the painting went on, I got more and more frustrated. I decided to stop as soon as I recognized this was going to do nothing positive for either myself, or the painting.
I am determined to learn patience and enjoy the confusion of figuring it all out. It’s gonna be a rough ride from here, but let’s just keep going shall we?
Thanks for reading if you got this far. I am mostly blogging to hold myself accountable, and to have an archive I can always refer to. So, I do plan to continue to blog although I hope to improve the image to text ratio in future posts! Eheh!
If you have any feedback, recommended resources or questions, I’d be happy to hear them!
Peace!
