Rant on the state of the world

I can't seem to stop worrying about the state of the world. Of humankind. Is it just that I'm getting older? But the world really does seem to be going to hell.
What happened to craftsmanship? Pride in your work? Why do we seem to think we shouldn't have to work? That happiness comes from spending money, eating and drinking too much, being lazy. I know I'm whining, but I can't get this out of my head. And painting it would not be fun or make a very good picture! We have no more leaders. We don't even know what leadership is anymore. People seem to think a leader is the one that spent the most money, or makes the most money, or won an election. Everything is about money in this country, maybe the world, but I can't speak for them. Really, we have succeeded in making the dollar bill our god. Every decision is ultimately based on the bottom line. And making a decision based on what is right for everyone in the long run, in other words a moral decision, is just derided. Our senators and congressmen blatently make choices based on who they owe favors to, and short sighted selfish gains for their constituents. I'm not a highly educated person, I'm no genius. But really how can people who purport to be our leaders make these decisions. And how can we, the unwashed masses in their eyes, continue to take sides and fight for the opinions they have given us? What ever happened to thinking for yourself? To reading up on issues instead of just parroting what your "team" tells you to?
Sustainability. I know I live in a rather backward area, so maybe I'm seeing less of this than in more progressive areas. I remember being very young 8 or 9 and my decision making was always based on: what would happen if everyone did this? It's a simple thing. I admit as I got older and struggled to survive financially and emotionally, I lost track of that simple question.
Hormones. I've gone through menopause and am no longer awash in hormones. I can now see which of my emotions and choices were based on hormones. We are animals by our physical nature, our prime directive is the perpetuation of the species. It's hardwired. Those hormones trigger thoughts, points of view, desires, that are basically impossible to ignore. Finding a mate, being attractive, having babies, nurturing babies, protecting family. Those things colored every decision I made once I hit puberty. What if, What if, humans didn't have those hardwired animal nature instincts. Fights, wars for power and dominance. Would they exist? Would men and women even associate? Or would we lose the differences that are so obvious now? What in the world would we do? Would we still have the desire to be loved? Accepted? Would we become wholly self centered or wholly unselfish? I don't know. But I do know popular culture is based almost exclusively on mating. Our heroes are the young and sexy. Wisdom, vision, spirit, what happened to those. I know none of this is new news. But really do people not see that they are being completely manipulated by people who just want to sell them something. Fashion? Please, its just about changing everything every season so everyone goes out and buys more stuff they don't need, on credit. Do they not see that this is but another attempt to be loved and accepted by their peers. To see themselves as worthy of the love. A basic hardwired need that the fashion industry very blatantly manipulated in order to make money. Period. They get richer, and we go further in debt.
Debt. When did it become okay to buy stuff you don't need until you can't pay your bills, and then just declare bankruptcy? When did it become cool to steal. Because thats what it is. you have a bunch of stuff you didn't pay for.
Religion. Is now a business. It's corporate america. At least the successful ones are. By that I mean the ones that can pay their bills by having enough customers. There are some small congregations with good people, people looking for love and community. More often than not led by someone who needs personal power. They are social clubs. I'm sorry, but the concept of spiritual thought, spiritual practice, personal spiritual journeys, have given way to club rules, infighting, power struggles, self importance, judgement, politics.
Children. Children do not learn to become contributing, mature adults by being treated like they are the center of the universe when they are a child. When did our lives start revolving around making money to buy our kids a bunch of stuff they don't need. Waiting in line at Christmas to buy them the trendiest new toy. Spending our day in the car shuttling them from this lesson to that practice. Doing their homework "with" (for) them? Cooking special meals for them. We have raised a generation of lazy, entitled, disrespectful kids that can't take care of themselves, can't manage their money, can't put in a good days works. We have girls getting boob jobs in their teens and considering manicures a necessity. We have taught them that love is bought with money. What is the incentive to becoming an adult if everything revolves around you as a child. Why would they want to grow up and have children when that means they become the slave? How do they even know how to be an adult if the parent acts this way? How do they learn to think for themselves or be creative when every moment is scheduled and all their entertainment is packaged.
I so often feel helpless in the face of all this. Does anyone else feel this way?

Taxes - ugh!

I find when I can't paint and am forced to do other stupid things like housework, or laundry or TAXES I am full of inspiration and chomping at the bit to get to the studio. Other times when I don't have anything but painting on the schedule I fart around doing this or that and waste half the day. Guess that just proves I'm human! Well yesterday was taxes all day long. We have three rental houses that all changed tenants last year. I keep track of them on Quickbooks, but hadn't done a damn thing on it since I did last years taxes. So lots of trying to figure out what deposits were for since my hubby doesn't like to write that down when he does one! Probably if I did this every month it wouldn't be an issue. sigh. This year for sure I'm going to keep up! It would take me like 30 minutes a month at most. So today I have to do the tax returns then I'll be free to get back to my crayon competition. I'm having such a lot of fun with this one. I'm doing a still life with army guys and a dinosaur. as the background I colored a scene the way I would have colored it when I was 5 or so. So there will be obvious color crayon marks with the foreground done more realistically. I am really leaning towards childhood things in my paintings lately, I think this is really opening up a whole lot of ideas for me. I went to the store and bought a bunch of toys - Mr. Potato Head, jacks, clay, army men, dinosaurs. There aren't too many of the classic old toys anymore. I'm sure there are copywrite issues involved with using recognizable toys in paintings. I'll have to read up on that. So - off to the taxes so maybe I'll have some of the day left for art! Back to work tomorrow. Here's one of my first army guy vs the dinosaur set ups. I like to photgraph them, makes it easier to translate into 2D, plus I have the real setup for color, etc. I'm going to do a different background picture, and I have work to do on the lighting. I'm debating on what to use as the floor surface as well. fun stuff! Well - it's not letting me download the photo, so I guess you'll have to wait to see that!

Daffy Spring

Okay, I'm calling this one done! Im happy with the colors, I feel like I learned quite a bit. The shadow colors were really giving me fits. I wanted it to stay YELLOW, and warm but still get some shadows. I think one of my problems is that I tend to have too big of a value difference between the light and shadow. Probably from working with photos. So in the end I used 2 different shadow colors because the center cup like parts were warmer than the outside petals. center shadow were cad yellow deep with quin gold and a bit of cerulean, and then lightened up with cad yellow lemon into the lights. I didn't use any cad yellow deep in the outside petals and more cerulean for a greener tone. I have this process that I have to repaint things a bunch of times until I get a feel for the contours. Then I can simplify. Hopefully, as I gain experience the process time will shorten up! :)

So I've got two projects in mind now. One is really fun. A local gallery is doing a competition. They provide the supplies which are a box of 24 crayons and 3 pieces of basic copy paper. That's it! You can't use anything else! I'll post my progess, but lets just say I went to the store and bought toys today :) I'm having a silly amount of fun with this. And that's the point, after all.

The other project perculating is the outdoor cafe scene. Haven't worked on that today. Yesterday was a trip to Eugene to get Bill's colonoscopy. All went well and afterwards he didn't want to go home he wanted to EAT and then go shopping. LOL. He's a tough cookie. Today he rode his bike 45 miles. Whew. I painted. Works for me!

So, I should be working on taxes tomorrow, but I think I'll be coloring!

Plein Air Day! :)

On Monday's I go out with a little group to paint en plein air. It's so nice to get out of the house and just breath the fresh air. I am starting to get a little better at actually getting some paint on canvas. It's so much harder than it looks, the real problem is focusing on just one small scene. I always try to do to much. I have learned to use a smaller canvas. This one is a little 8X10 panel. Today we got out there and I realized I had everything except white paint! I had a tiny dab on my pallet and that was it. Bummer. So I had to touch up a bit when I got home. It's tough to make light pink blossoms with no white! I'm feeling good about this because I haven't done anything at all worth keeping the last few times I've been out. Not that this is much more than a sketch. But I did learn some things. Kinda hard to see in this one but I like the way the stand of trees on the right turned out. I'm getting better at muting my colors down. It always surprises me that a color that looks really dull and grey on the pallet can be very pretty on the canvas. Its all about what colors it is next to. I've read about that in lots of books, but I always reach for those bright colors - then wonder why the painting looks so off. Duh. I'll get it eventually. Work tomorrow so I probably won't get back to the Daffy's until Friday - maybe Saturday cause we're going to Eugene on Friday for Bill to have a colonoscopy. I know, more than you needed to know! But we'll be back in the afternoon, so maybe I'll get some work in. And next weekend I have to do the taxes, which will mean a days worth of updating quickbooks with all the info on the rentals. Blah. I keep putting it off, but it hangs in the back of my mind making me anxious. Next I'm going to try to use this photo, but something pretty different with it. I like the buildings in the background and the umbrellas. I'm going to put the ladies in something more elegant. Maybe with hats. I like the sunlight, too, but I think I'll try to make the furniture look more like iron. We'll see how that all goes!

Wow. Total mess. worked on the flower on the left trying to reshape it. It had so much paint it was silly. Same with the one in the middle. After a couple of hours I scraped both of them back. I'm using open acrylics, so I can do that. Sigh. I used a mixture on the top left one that seemed to be working for the shadows. Cad yellow, hansa yellow, quin gold and a little ultramarine and some white I think. Tried to recreate that on the other two and it totally didn't work. After scraping back the bottom two, I decided to do the whole flowers in the shadow color, then come back over the top with the lighter colors. So I used Hansa yellow, cad yellow lemon and cerulian for the outside petals and cad yellow, quin gold,a little white and some napthal red for the centers. I came back on themiddle flower with cad yellow, hansa and some white to make the light parts of the center. Then Juli and Tricia arrived so I stopped. We had a lovely day making necklaces and bracelets with beads. I bought a bunch of them months ago because I couldn't find any jewelry I wanted to buy. I don't usually wear much jewelry, but it seemed fun to wear it to work for a while. Well, I didn't finish much because it was cutting into painting time! :P But we had a great time today, so it was all good! Tomorrow is plein air day, unless its raining, so I may not get back to the daffys for a few days. My plan though is to come home from work and spend an hour or so anyway. That never quite works out because Bill wants to have dinner right away. Ah well. We'll see how it goes. it rained today, so I may be in the studio after all. Adding the lights and doing some more work on that middle one. Overworked much ?! Pttthhhh.

New Day, New Plan

Well I had a good night's sleep and have a new plan for the daffodils. Today I'm going to go back into the flowers themselves and reestablish more accurate shapes. I'm working from photos of the blooms in my front yard for this one. I printed out a number of them and cut out the blossoms, then arranged them until I found a design I liked. They are taped up on the wall in my studio now. I kind of like them there, might leave them! :) Anyway, I'm NOT going to get detaily (are you listening self?) I'm just going to make the big shadow and light shapes more accurate, and pick out the highlights more accurately. I'm still stumped about adding more darks, I don't know what color to use. The light is midday, so if I remember right the lights should be cool and the shadows warm. Well my shadows have blue added to make green, so they are cool and my lights are all yellow so they are warm! Crap. Okay, so maybe it's not midday. Lets call it morning, thats better symbolism with the upbeat happy nature of daffodils, right? So my lights are warm and my shadows cool. So maybe I need to go just a touch cooler, ooh maybe I just need to add some straight ultramarine so the darkest darks are blue. The Magenta yellow blue color from yesterday definately did not work. It was very dark too, though, so maybe I need to watch that my value doesn't go tooo dark. When I go a darker green that doesn't work either. Speaking of the green shadows, I think I'll try greying them down a bit, maybe the green is too bright, or maybe I'm using the wrong green! I think I'll try cerulean cause that tends too muddy up most everything it mixes with anyway. So - adjust flower shapes, try a blue for the darks, try a different blue in the shadow mix. I'm off!

Okay this is a great example of how I screw things up. Crap. So the whole magenta idea sucked.

So I had to go back over it with my ultramarine and cadmium and hansa yellow medium. Now I've lost all the nice easy brushstrokes and it is just madly overworked. Arg. You see I go from happy to miserable in 20 minutes. I try to stop thinking about it, but somehow I just worry it to death. Ha, another revelation of how art expresses who I am. Worrying everything to death. Well. I'm going to leave it alone now. I don't know if it's a patience thing. I need to just slow down and make choices instead of just slathering on the paint I think. Maybe I'll like it better tomorrow. In the mean time I need to think about what to do next. Juli and Tricia will be down and want to paint with me. I'm not too sure how that will work out but it should be fun. I'm going to go do some gessoing and clean up the studio. Arg.

S