Painting Again

After eight years of not touching paintbrush or canvas, I am painting again! I moved to a new community earlier this year, and it is an artsy kind of place. Two weeks ago, the city hosted Art Week, and I attended the Art Walk -- essentially a self-guided tour of galleries, mini exhibitions, and artists' studios that were opened to the public for a couple of days. At one studio, I found out that they had an opening in their Thursday night art class, so I signed myself up.

It is not the instruction that I am interested in so much as the motivation that comes of having something scheduled into my day that I have already paid for. I know myself well. Left to my own devices, I will not paint at home, even though I have a lovely easel, all the equipment, and even a perfect room for a studio.

So tonight, I left work early (but not early enough), raced home and gobbled down some turkey soup, and gathered my painting equipment that Rob spent over an hour digging through moving boxes to find. (He is a wonderful person.) I took a quick snapshot of our backyard with my iPad, and rushed to town, late, to join the class. I felt so nostalgic as I unpacked my oil paints, my palette knives, my brushes, and my paint shirt. Mixed in with the equipment, I even still had the had the palette of dried paint blobs left from my last painting, so many years ago.

I laid out the composition and did the under-painting tonight. This is what it looks like so far:

And here is the photo that I was working from:

I feel happy to be at the easel again.