Artsy Fartsy
Artsy Fartsy
Current mood: 
nostalgic
Here is a watercolor I started at a Relief Society Enrichment Night. If you don’t know what RS is, it’s one of the oldest and largest women organizations in the world… see www.lds.org for more detailed information. The women of the LDS church get together to talk, learn new things, and have a break from the children. Only, if you’re like me, my children come with me everywhere. (I judge the customer service everywhere I go by how well they treat me even when I’m surrounded by three, sometimes four if you count Josh, high energy kids.)
I was looking forward to this particular night because we were going to play kickball, have a picnic dinner, learn how to watercolor, and then do some yoga. Each item on the agenda struck a particular chord with me.
I haven’t played kickball since my days at David Burcham Elementary School in Long Beach, CA. In fact, kickball was my first step into the tomboy world and out of walking around with the girls being totally bored. I remember one day in third grade, we walked by the boys playing kickball and I could not supress my supposed-to-be-girly “Oh, no, I couldn’t possibly!” So I just asked if I could play and they let me jump in the game. I loved it! I don’t know what happened to the girls, can’t even remember their faces or names, but every recess of every day after that was spent hanging out with the boys playing kickball.
Remember calling out how you liked the ball “pitched” to you? Like baby bumps or smooth or fast or granny style? I tried doing that with the ladies I played with last month and got a few laughs. I got to kick once since I got there late, and was surprised that I could still do it. Good fun and good memories brought to mind.
Afterwards, we sat down at picnic tables to eat. I ate a couple of strawberries since I had already eaten and forgot that there would be food. Strawberries are one of the reasons why we came to earth to receive a body. It’s very hard to consume one as a spirit. Sure, you can look at it, but you can’t smell it or touch it or taste it. In my opinion, one of life’s greatest pleasures is driving on some farm road in Northern California and getting freshly picked strawberries from one of the many stands you can encounter in the summer. The strawberries are ripe and sweet, sometimes not even washed and still a little warm from the sun. Oh! Nothing can compare to strawberries grown in California. Now you know why I have a huge strawberry on my profile.
The tables were cleared of food and then replaced with cups of water, brushes, and sheets of watercolor paper. But I missed what the lady was about to teach us. I had to take Zack home because he had fallen butt-first into a giant puddle of mud. Plus, the kids were embarrassing me by their constant whining for a piece of cheesecake or whatever they had out on the tables… it was as if I had not just fed them or ever in their entire lives. The young lady that was supposed to be providing childcare had taken off somewhere leaving me to look like the evil mommy that could only utter one word — “No!”
We only live a minute away (seriously, you can count to sixty in the time it takes for us to drive from church to home and the only reason why we don’t walk is because there is no safe way to do that with three kids and no sidewalk), so I jetted home, got Zack changed, got back to the church, found homechick that was babysitting, and finally sat down with a blank piece of paper and a brush.
All the other papers on the tables had apples on them. There was a single apple in the middle of the table and the ladies were attempting to paint it like the one the teacher had done (which of course looked like the Mona Lisa – impossible to duplicate). I had to quickly sketch the apple in pencil and start painting to get caught up. The teacher was giving advice while we went along.
I did get caught up and was entranced by the magic of it all. I don’t have much experience with watercolors and no one has ever told me how to use them. I just sit down with the kids every now and then and play around. The teacher held up my painting and said something about following the same curved stroke and one of my friends said, “Way to go, Trish, teacher’s pet!”
I am always amazed when a piece of white paper becomes the shiny spot where light is hitting the object. Well, it didn’t happen too well in this example, but I caught a small glimpse of it at some point. There’s a lot of dabbing and repainting in watercolors. Kind of cool, actually, because it’s very forgiving, but my apple went through many looks before it got to this point. I wasn’t able to finish the painting that night because we had to stop in order to have time for yoga.
Yoga was pretty interesting. It was mostly stretches and relaxing, really, I don’t know if you could really call it yoga. There was magic in that, too, though, because while I thought I had been stretching for a half hour with my eyes closed, listening to calming music and the soft voice of our teacher, only ten minutes had passed. I was very relaxed. If only I could spend ten minutes of every day doing that, I might be a little less frantic about deadlines and schedules. It showed me that it’s possible, and it left me with a little goal that I could probably keep in the future. I had a little hope breathed into me.
And a little itch to paint again. I did with Seth on regular cardstock that same week, but the soggy mess left me with an even bigger itch to paint. I have somewhat scratched that desire by going to Michael’s and using my 40% off coupon to buy some watercolors, a packet of brushes, and a pad of watercolor paper.
With my supplies laid out on the table one night, I touched up the apple painting I had started. It was really hard to do it without having the apple in front of me, though. I was trying to remember how the leaves looked, but gave up. I ended up just putting a nice red edge and green edge in there. It’s not realistic, but I had fun loading up the brush with just the right amount of color and water and then putting it to the paper. It’s just fun!
I’m pretty proud of my painting, but I know it’s not much. Shoot. Just look at Justin’s stuff and you’ll see why I was hesitant to post. Oh, well, you gotta start somewhere, right?
Posted on April 23rd, 2007 by trish
Filed under: Artsy Fartsy