Painting

So, I think painting is harder than drawing. My pencil never glops up on me, ruining my nice straight line. And if I do make a stray mark, I can easily erase it. I don't have to worry about whether my graphite is mixed properly or if it needs to be thicker or thinner. Paint has a mind of its own, but in some ways that's what makes paintings special. 

I haven't painted in about ten years, and even then I don't think I produced anything particularly thrilling. So, when we needed a piece to go over our couch and my husband and I agreed we wanted a painting of a barn, I wasn't thinking it would be my painting. He had other ideas. I think he has a lot more confidence in what I can pull off than I do, or else he just doesn't realize that painting and drawing are very different things. I've been studying a lot of the elements of drawing that I've felt weak in over the past couple years and I thought that would translate somewhat into painting, but I mean it's still painting. I was hesitant and told him I would practice on an old 28 x 22 inch canvas I had under our guest bed. If it turned out ok we could decide if we want to get a larger canvas for over the couch. Ever the optimist, he encouraged me to get a larger 36 x 36 inch canvas while they were on sale at Hobby Lobby and if I still didn't feel right about it after doing the smaller painting, we could just return it. 

This was the result of my practice painting. It still needs work, and I'm not even sure exactly what some of that work is to be honest. I'm not really digging the yellow in the sky and I want to change the lines in the bottom right corner. But it was fun to play with paint again and made me want to do more...

So now I'm working on this beast for over our couch. I'm hoping I can get it done soon so I can get it on the wall and out of everyone's way.