The past 6 weeks or so have been a time of great excitement and discovery with my usual deep (obsessive?) plunge into my new hobby. I’m 6 weeks into my 8 week drawing class and we are having so much fun that along with my Monday morning compadres, I say it’s gone too fast and don’t want it to end. The encouraging thing about it all, I guess, is the way one’s images can go from non-existent to recognizable very quickly – when you are at the very bottom of drawing ability, the climb is fast. Nowhere to go but up.
When the series of drawing classes are over at the end of the month, next up is a 2-day workshop on painting with acrylics. But I haven’t been waiting for that to get myself started, as I’ve spent just about every day in The Bunkie Studio painting on my own, learning about brushes and technique and color mixing. I’ve found lots of demonstration videos on You Tube and my artist neighbor is lending me all kinds of books from her library. Evenings I sit by the fire with my IPad and read art magazines and follow links to artist sites. I look at everything, not so much to see what I like and don’t, although there’s always that, but more to try to figure out how the artist did this or that and why, and to learn how to do it. I am finding a whole community out there, from the people in our local Arts Center and galleries to the vast online world, and I might say that the comments on the various intertube sites seem to be far more civilized than elsewhere.
There’s a whole new vocabulary and language to absorb. Technical terms and descriptive phrases, color naming and method words. A new hobby means shopping and of course, this is not inexpensive. I’ve dropped hundreds already (who’s counting) on paints and brushes and mediums (there’s that new vocabulary) and gadgets – a trip to the art supply store is like hanging out in a wonderful toy store. Now that I think about it and look around The Bunkie Studio, I must have enough arts and crafts supplies from earlier power shopping for all my other projects to open my own art school.
Speaking of art school – Last January before I started all this madness, we were in Vancouver walking around Granville Island one day, poking around seeing what there was to see. Granville Island is a place in downtown Vancouver inlet that is home to a market, marinas, theaters, restaurants, shops, galleries, artist studios. It is the place where one day, 10 years ago or so, we made that fateful decision that ultimately brought us to where we are now (see Where It All Began). It is also the home of the Emily Carr University – the art college. This particular January day as we walked past the campus and watched the young students on break, sitting or strolling under the sunshine, a quite incredible statement came through my mouth, from who knows where (as is wont to do from time to time). I said “Why did I spend my time way back when doing economics and business at school? What was I thinking? I should have been here!”
Which is an amazing statement given that I never showed the slightest inclination back in the day. As a matter of fact I have a somewhat cringeworthy memory of my last formal art history class in grade 9 when I went to an all girls’ school in Montreal. This class consisted of our group sitting around a large table while the teacher at the front of the room showed us slides of great works of art. For the most part she faced the screen, telling us what we were looking at, her back to us. Bad idea. The minute the projector was revved up and the lights were turned off our little group of teenybopper morons (you know who you are) started acting up. Spitballs, giggles and other projectiles got tossed across the table at each other, all movement ceasing whenever the teacher twisted around to look at us. The only thing I took from that class was that there are 3 types of classical Greek columns. To this day, I still can’t name them. A complete waste of a private school education. Sorry Mom and Dad.
That was then and now is now and with delight I find a whole new world comes into view. The beginner’s mind is a place of wonder, or discovery, not knowing all that is possible but ready to plunge in nonetheless. I came across a description of the process from artist and instructor, Tony Smibert. He explains the Japanese expression, shu ha ri, often used in martial arts training, but relevant to the learning artist as this – any person learning a traditional craft moves through 3 stages of leaning so that they first absorb the forms and techniques of earlier masters, then make these their own and finally move on to powerful originality in their own work.
So here I am, in stage 1, absorbing and experimenting. I have no idea what I’ll eventually end up creating (that “powerful originality”) but for now I’m learning the how to’s. Here’s a photo of a painting I finished yesterday, from a tutorial by Ben Saber, exploring color mixing, different brushes and brush strokes, shadow, light and perspective. Fun fun fun.
