We’re taking temporary custodianship of another painting by our friend Beth, while its previous caretakers work on cleaning up their house for sale. After I brought it home I was talking with Emily about how envious I am of Beth’s painting technique: “She’s all [big sweeping arm gestures] ‘woooooooooo’ and I’m more like [finicky little fingertip gestures] ‘enh enh enh enh enh.’” Emily’s response: “Yeah, but what about painting?”
Emblematic [2]
I used to be all scritchel scritchel ehuheuh with the pencil, and then you know what changed me? In high school I was lucky enough to have a fantastic painting teacher who forced us to paint with our palette knife. Being new to oils AND having to use a palette knife (the big rounded kind, not the little precise kind) was verrrry uncomfortable and imprecise.
Then at Williams, Mike Glier made us do 30-second paintings of Doone with brush & ink. Well, we started with 10-min drawings, I think, and worked our way down.
So, in summary, you should only envy those exercises I was made to do, and perhaps try them at home.
Let’s do them together, whenever we next see each other!
I don’t even have a palette knife, I don’t think.