The Foundation of the Painting

Sometimes I really struggle with a painting.  I will take it back to my easel numerous times, never being to accomplish a finished piece.  I Look back at those paintings that seemed to give me so much grief,  and I now I can see what most of them had in common.  I rushed the foundation.  Let me elaborate a bit on this.  When I begin a painting, I lay down a basic foundation of color.  This foundation determines many things about the finished piece, such as the color scheme, where the light and dark values will lie, and how balanced they will be, and even where the focal point of the painting will be.  All of this is decided before anything that even resembles an object has been brushed onto the canvas.  If these first layers of paint are not working, then the painting will not work. 

I know that this seems obvious, it really applies to so many things in life.  If you are building a retaining wall, and first layer is not level – the wall will not be level, and it will not be stable, and may eventually topple.  Even though it seems obvious, it wasn’t really something that I thought about with my paintings until recently.  This revelation though, has helped me to become more consistent in my painting style, and I believe that I am a better painter because of it.  From now on, I will not rush the foundation.  Here is one of my more recent paintings…

sunflower 14x18

The Simple Things

Finally it’s here.  After the long, cold, snowy, icy, dreary, miserable Winter, Spring has finally arrived here in Minnesota.  Sunday afternoon, the sun warmed us up to about 75 degrees.  I opened all of the windows in the house and let the warm breeze fill it up with that spring smell.  Sunday night as we sat around the fire pit in the back yard, I was able to sit quietly and listen to the songs of the crickets for the first time this year.   I love all of the sounds of spring – birds singing, bee’s buzzing, leaves rustling – but the sound of the crickets at night is my favorite.  There is something very peaceful about that sound.  I love to sleep with the window open and let them sing me to sleep on spring nights.  This is one of the simple things that I have learned to appreciate. 

Every once in a while, I like to step back and take a look at my life as a whole, to contemplate whether I am on the right track.  Over the years, my husband and I have accomplished many things including raising our two boys, buying a house, taking some awesome vacations.  I look back at our humble beginnings, when we had nothing, and I think how wonderfully our lives have turned out.  But when I look closely at my daily life, and compare it to my life when I was young and poor, there are several things that I used to truly enjoy, that I had forgotten.  Sometimes I become so busy filling my life up with things, that I had lose touch with the simple things that really make life enjoyable.   I am making a personal goal of mine to take some time each day to enjoy some of the simple things in life like the crickets on a spring night.