One More Try..

I tell myself I love drawing and painting and wish I could draw and paint better than I can, but what do I do about it? Nada! I have not drawn or painted anything since my last trip to Europe. 

I love to keep travel journals and a few years back I started trying to keep travel sketch journals..you know..one a day..a drawing finished off in watercolour in one of those little Moleskin sketch journals ...I had visions of sitting in front of a castle or whatever and capturing it on site in my little journal with my little travel watercolour case and cute little water brush....Dream along....

Sketching on site? Impossible! Painting on site? Even worse!  OMG... Every day I would end up waiting until the end of the day and would then try to paint from a photo I had taken that day...at least I could sit comfortably where there was no wind or bugs, or a sun that was so hot the paint dried before I had finished fussing with it! But it took all evening! And I was tired. Another day of sight-seeing and endless paintable subjects awaited my attention the next day!  and the day after that....This just wasn't working...

I wanted to be able to do this on site..in the great outdoors; so I signed up ( every two years) for an En Plein Air watercolour weeks in France...heh heh..Like, sure....Fun, yes. I loved the paintable places we went, loved taking photos of paintable subjects in those paintable places but hated the end of day critiques as I had lots of photos, but at the most, only one partially drawn sketch - nothing with paint on it! 

I was struggling to draw the perfect picture which I would then fill in with paint like in a colouring book?...That was not the idea. Despite all urgings from the leader, I just couldn't seem to loosen up and sketch; I was still trying to draw meticulously!  And never got around to the painting part! 

So last year, I took a pen and ink course at our local art gallery that promised  to help my sketching - where I was NOT to fuss with rulers, trying to be exact...where I was to complete each sketch in minutes, not hours! And then, the paints could come out and with a few touches of colour, I supposedly would have a  scene or object captured well enough for a travel SKETCH journal entry.  Voila! This was a plan that I might be able to implement! 

Now, if only I had a trip...Drat...The one I had planned to the UK got canceled ...but there is hope for another one later this year. So..perhaps I should get out my pen and a sketchbook and practise? To be ready?

So that is today's blip - for the past three days I have done that...but using photos sent from a friend on vacation in Portugal where I would rather be...I think a more helpful plan would be to go outside and practise the real thing - outside...no comfy chair to sit on, in wind, hot sun, and maybe even with mosquitoes? THAT would be the real test!   

BUT...... not yet...I am not ready for that.. Temps below zero, a bit of snow, freezing rain..sketching by the fire is Ok for now!