For some reason, my artsy leanings tend to be seasonal. In the winter, fiber arts take over – spinning, knitting, crochet. In the spring and summer, out come the paints!
I’ve been signed up for Willowing’s LifeBook course for months, but only in the last week or so have I even really watched the videos. My brain just shut that kind of creativity off for awhile. Then it burst out and spread paint all over everything.
I went to an exhibit at the Amon Carter museum in Ft Worth a few weeks ago, and that really helped to refill the well, creatively. It was a on the watercolors of Charles Russell, who was known for his depictions of the American West, usually for bronze statues and oils, but his first love was actually watercolor!
I even got to see some of his field boxes, and I sketched one:
He was a really cool looking guy:
Quite natty in his buckskin fringed cowboy duds.
The thing I absolutely love about seeing watercolor works from famous artists is that you can see the bones of the paintings – the under-sketching shows through, and you can see where something was changed, moved, left out. Where they made mistakes or just changed their minds on something. You can see the humanity of a simple person just creating as they go.
So now my paintbrushes are getting their workout, and I have made new art that I love.I’m going to continue to do that this summer.
And I’m thinking of revisiting last year’s Buy Nothing Summer. I wonder if anyone else out there will join me.
