Friday, we did another live painting class!  In that session, we focused on still life painting and painted a Barlett pear with some leaves.  When I first started painting, I wasn’t interested in the still life genre at all, but after painting 100 landscapes off of pictures, I saw some of the issues of not painting from life.  Since still life is the easiest thing to set up and have readily on hand as a “model”, I decided to paint 100 still lifes.  I saw myself grow so much as an artist during that time.  It was overwhelming at first, trying to paint from a three-dimensional perspective instead of a flat image, but my eye was better trained through the process and I’ve grown to really enjoy painting still lifes. We started the class with an exercise – a 10-minute pear.  I could almost feel the panic when I said

On Friday, we had another live oil painting class on Facebook.  Those have been so much fun and have given me a good excuse to make painting more of a priority.  I really got out of it after my shoulder surgery and this has helped ease me back in and practice almost every day. Last week, we painted four mini landscape.  They are so quick and low-pressure and I’ve really enjoyed painting them.  I have learned so much already through just experimenting, trying new-to-me things, and working outside of my comfort zone.  Here are the paintings I completed for the class… We started out with a summer landscape with interesting clouds… And moved onto one with stormier skies… We then experimented with texture…laying down the paint and just leaving it.  I wanted to try some different things with the participants, so they can discover their own style… And we finished