So, I who have barely picked up a pencil to sketch in 20+ years randomly decided to take a one night painting class. Yeah, I’m still not quite sure what possessed me to do that, but hey I put my ducats down, so I have to pick the paint brush up.  I’m pretty sure there were two or three erstwhile art students in the class, they were THAT good, but it was fun for the rest of us paintbrush plebes.

Our tools – canvas, brushes, paint and (unseen in pics) an apron and a cup of water.

The way the class worked is that the artist in residence for the evening, a lovely fellow named Jon, had previously painted a picture (the source painting). With a fresh blank canvas, he guides us step by step through the process. Our job for the evening was to create something similar to it. Think a more freehand paint by numbers, only without the numbers or the guide lines.

The source painting by Jon

A pencil and sketchbook person myself, this was my first foray into using acrylics.  Lesson one learned, get clarification on “dark blue”.  My blue with just a little black in it looked more midnight, when Jon was clearly going for late afternoon/early evening in the source painting. However, I must concede his blue during the class demo was also much darker than his original, so the change in hue may have been done on purpose.

Here are a few steps in my process…

a mixed dark blue background with some yellow streaks

something that hopefully looks like clouds?

adding some foliage

And at last, Le Product Final…

click me please!

You can see I missed the memo regarding leafy trees, a stream and stars – as in none of those are in the original painting.  I and five other wanna-be-on-a-musuem-or-at-least-mom’s-wall-one-day shared a table and had a blast.  Well, five of us had a blast. One young woman became so frustrated with hers, she  just started putting gobs of paint on her canvas. The result was something along the lines of Pollack meets Picasso with some Van Gough swirlies tossed in. It turns out all of us at our table were the resident trouble makers in that we each did something with our respective paintings that was not “in the script”: a Christmas tree, a hawk against a sky of muted purples and pinks, trees with snow, one with no trees, but tall grass instead and my stream, stars and leafy trees instead of pines. Creative license indeed.

Overall I had fun, I discovered something else I can now do and not make too much of a mess out of it. Clearly, I need to practice more with acrylics, so it is safe to say no one will be clamoring for a Raivenne original anytime soon. (Imagines my artist buddy AW sarcastically wiping the mock sweat of worry -as if- from his furrowed brow).