aTi 7/9/08 oil painting major

I had already finished my 1st of 3 paintings made there this summer when my journal notes began. Unlike last summer at aTi which was my 1st time painting since I was a 15 year art major at a school of the arts where I now teach, I was not exuberant the whole time I painted this summer. Instead, I was much harder on myself . Not only because the bar was raised, but because I did not meet my goal of going in each day fully prepared with photos and decisions regarding my subject matter because I stayed so busy doing other things. I've got to get my time management & organization skills together so I don't waste so much of those precious gifts--time & life!!!

To make matters worse, our teacher, Kit, made us spend a maximum of 2 days on the 1st painting which in reality amounted to about 3 hours in my case. My attempts to save gas by finding new routes was a disaster (until the last day, of course). Despite arriving late all but one day, which was bad enough, I craved breakfast & my caffeine fix each morning so I'd feed my stomache before feeding my soul. That would be before rushing to spend way too much time thinking & looking through magazines for photos to use for my subjects. My nerves were in frays the whole time because i so desperately wanted to do a great job. I've heard of writer's block before, but painter's block is a new one on me.

I never fully understood the rationale for this 2-days-only-for-1st-painting-thing beyond motivating & impressing people with how much can be done in little time. However, that could be because I was having a senior moment while Kit was explaining it. The painting of a meadow that I unwittingly settled on turned out "alright" but I still plan to do more to it--along with all 7 other paintings I've made in the last year. It's thanks only to aTi workshops that I got that many "done" though. I LOVE the 3 made last summer but I really only like the last of these 3 made 7/7-18/08. Yet ironically, the teacher & 1 of the other students (April Armstrong) who was there last summer, said they saw a lot of growth in these 3 compared to the work I did back then.

By the way, if there's some unique technique to cutting & pasting to edit my BLOG writings, I haven't figured it out yet so please help if you do before I do. Keep this in mind whenever you educated readers feel tempted to critique my writing skills since I have no time now to re-type everything in the ideal order I'd like to.

Posted by djwhitley at 5:09 AM