nineveh_uk

You know how it is, shopping with thought and consideration for some specific art or craft material*, and then whoops! Your hand/brain slips and the basket now also contains something completely different as well. So I am still buying some acrylic paint and paper/canvas as my art class will be doing acrylics the next few weeks, but also popped in some watercolour burnt sienna (extremely useful for everything, can't believe I haven't already got a tube only a very used half-pan) and Daniel Smith lunar black (extremely niche, but exactly what I want for a volcanic landscape painting I am thinking of).

The last few months have been rather challenging, but one thing that has been great is that I signed up for an art class run by the local FE college, hugely enjoyed the first term, and signed up for the second. At the beginning of the term, we were asked about our experience and why we had chosen it, and I said that I was outsourcing my self-discipline so that it would force me to focus on things I never do in my own time, practice, and learn new techniques.

So it has proved. I've done very little other art on account of it taking up this space in my brain and free time, but that's fine. I suspect that without it I'd have done even less. It's Wednesday evenings, I can drive and park there and not get cold/wet, and the tutor is really good. It was badged as a mixed ability class, and she's really good at lessons that work for class members of a range of previous experience and ability, and giving people the support and guidance that they individually need so that everyone enjoys themselves and learns. Moreover, while it's easy to sneer (and I have done) at the fact that local authority hobby classes now need to have "learning objectives" etc for their funding, in fact the tutor's application of it works really well in providing structure to the course and individual classes, so that what we are doing is contextualised both as a technique and in terms of art history/modern painters**.

In short, I have ended my long-standing feud with pastels, though I will only be using them at home when it is warm enough to work outside, have actually done perspective exercises for the first time in my entire life, and found that a still life drawing exercises are fun, actually.*** I find myself concentrating like hell. And I'm about to have a go at acrylics, which I have only tried once a long time ago, and which offer the opportunity to do something different than I usually do. Insert second set of grandiose thoughts about what I could do with them. Basics first!

Moral of the story: I nearly didn't sign up because I thought it would be too tiring. It is too tiring, but it's worth it.

*Or in IKEA, whatever 3 small things are on your list.

**Likes them. Looks up artist and sees price/discovers they are Canadian. Oh well. But also does feel a bit inspired by seeing what people are doing and how they are doing it.

***Though last week when I thought it would be fun to do the odd one at home when I just wanted to do some art and didn't know what, my brain rapidly went "Yes, you could do a big complex mixed media piece of these objects that are also in your home and it would be interesting to have the objects and the painting in conversation in the space together." NO!!! I can just draw one tiny vase in coloured pencils on a sheet of WH Smith cartridge paper, actually.