Last night Jane and I went to another Wine and Canvas class at Tiato. I’ve gotta say, I like Tiato well enough–it’s big, makes decent drinks, has plenty of parking–but damn, the lighting SUCKS. I spent waaaay too much time trying to get my green grass as electric and vibrant as the instructor’s, and it turned out it looked just fine under better lighting, but the dim lighting just made it look muddy. Also, sitting on the instructor’s not-painting-hand side means you end up looking at her back most of the night. I’m mostly happy with the painting, though.
My three day weekends are often filled with a lot of TV, napping, ‘net surfing, and generally sitting around. And yes, while this weekend wasn’t too different, it did have a few bright points, particularly Friday, ’cause this time, Friday was all about the FLYING FATALITY CLASS! (aka archery lesson) Jane and I had a Living Social coupon for Field Time Sports and Guns–kind of a creepy place, to be honest, if you’re anti-hunting like me. But the class was a million kinds of awesome.
Our instructor, Christopher, was exactly what you want when you’re being taught how to use a deadly weapon–friendly, funny, and patient, but most of all, skilled and enthusiastic about his sport. Plus he had great stories of previous students of the Katniss-fanatics variety. It was a small class of four–me, Jane, and a youngish couple (Kim and her bf/hubby/so whose name I never caught)–which meant plenty of personal attention. Plus there were two archery enthusiasts already on the range who frequently offered encouragement and the occasional joke.
We learned how to use a compound bow–lots of moving parts, but easier to control and to aim than a recurve bow. We shot at standard targets for awhile, practicing keeping our arrows in close groupings, then moved on to paper cups balanced on balloons. And yes, I totally nailed that cup with my first shot. And my third and fourth shots. (Second shot was to kill the balloon.) (My fifth shot went way wide for some reason, which is still bothering me.) We shot at a swinging plastic ball, which sadly I was only able to nick a few times before it inevitably got silenced by Kim’s partner. And we got to shoot zombies (which was one of the main reasons for taking this class in the first place–zombie apocalypse, anyone?), or at least, big portrait drawings of zombies. With ten seconds to make a kill shot, I totally got one of those bastards right in the eye. Woo!
Jane’s balloon lived a slightly longer life than the others, and was quite cocky about it. Photo by Jane.
Not too shabby
Trying to get the elusive center bullseye
Dead cup is dead
I really loved this class. It took only a few shots for it to start to feel natural and right. Maintaining the proper stance, breathing into the shot, taking aim and holding it–it required a lot of focus, and I found the experience very calming and centering. I can’t wait to do it again, which is why we’ve already bought a voucher for another half-price class. (I even checked out compound bows on Amazon, but wow, those suckers are NOT cheap.)
Oh, and possibly one of the best parts? One hour of archery equaled SIX Weight Watchers activity points–score!
I painted today. Sure, I went to Weight Watchers and lost 0.6 lbs, but mostly I painted. And Face Timed with my nephew. And painted.
I still hate the bear painting (which still doesn’t have a bear), but perhaps less than I hated it last week? This time I added buildings and telephone polls and globby cars and a very snowy-looking road.
It’s supposed to be summer, but I don’t think that’s what I’m seeing yet. Stupid snowy road. Stupid mutant cars.
The receding red car kinda looks like a Hummer, or a low-flying UFO. And I crossed my streetlights above that red roof. Oops. And no, I have no idea what the blue stuff is behind the green car. I was trying to imply other cars, but it didn’t really work out.
I painted. There was painting. I think it was a crime against all paintings, but yes, I did paint.
I sat at my easel, with my sketched canvas, and decided I needed to loosen up first, so I got a blank canvas, chose four colors I hadn’t used yet, and just started slapping it on in random movements. I covered the canvas, and it looked terrible, so I took my painting knife, and scraped some new patterns into the web paint.
Eh.
I like using sponges, so I spread one with pink paint and dabbed some splotches on. And they looked vaguely like flowers. So I dabbed some purple over those, and used a thin brush to add some light brown stems. But it was all so dark. White is often the answer to dark, so I smushed some around the pink and purple blobs. And along some of the brown stems. Then some green along the stems for some leaves. And this was the end result:
Blobs of flowers on blobs of color
Possibly my least favorite painting so far, I haven’t decided. I think it’s still too dark.
So I put that aside and got started on the bear painting. I decided to block out the lights and darks, like I’ve seen suggested on several blogs.
Blocked canvas, showing where gas station, sidewalk and departing car will go.
Then I wondered why the fuck I’d chosen this subject. So I sponged some foliage all over the green parts (sorry, forgot to take a pic), and hated it even more, so I decided it was time to walk away for awhile.
This was Saturday. It’s still sitting there, waiting for me to return and turn it into something vaguely resembling more than color blocks. Maybe Friday.
Ok, so I’m not exactly nailing the whole “post every single day” goal, but I’m trying, and it’s been a good month of plenty of posts. Yesterday was a late day at work, so I just couldn’t face any more internet for the day.
And just to get this out of the way, despite my “don’t wanna” state of mind, I got myself out of bed and off to Weight Watchers. I lost .4 lb this week–not as awesome as last week’s 3.4, but a loss is a loss. This week I’ll try to eat more veggies and less bbq sauce with my chicken.
For the rest of the day, I plan to work on a painting. January is almost over, and ideally I’d like to do at least one painting per month, so I keep progressing instead of letting all my expensive supplies go to waste. However, as I’ve mentioned before, it’s been hard to sit down and put something on canvas, partly because I couldn’t decide on a subject, and partly because I’m afraid of not living up to my last two awesome paintings.
To get over that, I’ve decided that today’s painting will likely be my worst painting ever, and so be it, ’cause this is a hobby, not a job. Who cares if it sucks?
For today’s suckitude, I have selected this photo from a vacation I took in 2008, in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.
Yes, this is a young bear crossing rt. 16 in North Conway, NH. Apparently he was headed towards the hospital.
I have done a preliminary sketch, and now I just have to slap some paint onto it.
