Fundamentals of Drawing and Painting: A Course in Courage to Become an Artist

I’m struggling with a painting of a beekeeper in a field calming bees by smoking a hive. An 18”x24” panel sits on a wood easel I bought last year to bring my painting practice inside. Until then, I’d painted only outside, en plein air, except for classes, since 2014. This morning, I sit on the futon in the room I call, with a bit of self-suspicion, “my studio”, and look hard at it.

Twice I’ve scraped it and started over. I may do so again. Two days ago, I stood in the Milwaukee Art Museum looking at Winslow Homer’s paintings in awe of the people he painted in the English fishing village of Cullercoats. Setting aside my surprise that Homer is actually American, and that I wonder if he picked that particular village because of its perfect-for-an-artist name, today, I wonder if my beekeeper isn’t the same story as the woman standing on rocks, above a tumultuous sea, a sail in the background, knitting. We viewers look up at her. She stands in the very middle of the picture… a frequently mentioned no no done well. Horizontally, she takes up the painting, her arm outstretched pulling on yarn from a skein in her apron. The painting foreground is no larger than the bottom of her shoe to her calf; the space from the top of her head into the sky, is that length plus up to her knee.

I know now, that’s “the story.” It’s the placement, the emphasis Homer gave her in space. The fishermen on the boat are not the story, her knitting is what she does while they are away. Her skirt billows like the boat’s sail. She’s as much a cog in the fishing village life as they are.  Like Ginger Rogers dancing all the same steps backwards without Fred Astair’s acclaim from the masses, she knits standing. My beekeeper needs a story. How do I know that? How do I do that?

I confess, I probably wouldn’t have known that was the issue with my painting, nor would have looked at Homer’s as critically, till discussions recently in the Palette and Chisel’s Fundamentals in Drawing andPainting class. Unfortunately for me, yesterday was the last day of that class. It’s a series, like college classes where you take 101 and learn basics about shapes, color, drawing, and 102 and 103 where they build on those knowledge and skills, and offer an understanding of what it really takes to create a successful piece of art. Yesterday was graduation.

I’m certainly not saying that now that I have completed the class I know exactly how to create the story. At best, I know I need to tell one. I am also saying that the difference from when I began 101 in March of last year through completing 102 and 103 is as if Fred had found Ginger a year before suffering from vertigo and never having danced. 

Until last March, I’d been struggling to move from hobbist to artist. Bob Krajecki and Dale Popovich the instructors who’ve taught this class together for years, gave me steps, not the choreography. I’d taken many classes and workshops, had dozens of critiques, but still couldn’t create a painting that I could envision as successfully completed. Fundamentals gave me language about art and about my art. It’s given me check lists, both in notes and in my head of how to start a piece, how to develop it, what to look for to complete it, and how to self critique it.

This post is as much a thank you to Dale and Bob. Though I’ve learned tons from previous instructors, it wasn’t until I had this core structure, did the previous teachings make sense.

I am grateful I came to the class with experience in painting, critiques and hours outside painting landscapes and cityscapes in wind, sun, rain, snow and fog. Those experiences teed up many aha! moments in class.  I’d heartily recommend this program at the Palette and Chisel for anyone who comes to painting, without formal training, no matter if they prefer, oils, watercolors or pastels. I don’t recommend it for those who aren’t willing to do the exercises or have a tendency to defend their finished pieces, it’s a place to learn from every nuance, not turn out masterpieces.

I received an email on Saturday, that a painting of mine sold from a plein air competition in Northbrook, IL. Currently, I have two paintings hanging for a year as “public works of art” in my home village of Deerfield, IL. These are signs of acknowledgement of my development as an artist since I began the class. My palette knife is ready to begin the third scrape, and I with the help of Krajecki, Popovich and Homer, the beekeeper’s story is about to be retold.

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The following posts are in chronological order from most recent to the beginning of my journey since 2014 when I began to view myself as artist. 

• How to Pack for Plein Air Painting
• 2017 - Progress on Becoming an Artist
• The Trail to the Cedarburg Plein Air Event
• Your Creativity - Early or Late in Life? Quick or Never Done? Malcolm Gladwell makes sense of it
• Unpacking The Evolution of Learning and Mastery of the Creative Acts
• Self Confidence and the Up Hill Climb of Learning a New Craft
• Dabbling Is My Creative Process 2015
• You Calling My Art a Hobby? 2014

The Trail to the Cedarburg Plein Air Event

Full Circle. In 2014 my friend Nancy and I left the Interurban Bike Trail to find facilities and coffee and rode into Cedarburg, WI. There were people at easels everywhere, painting the town, so to speak. I remember being fascinated by a guy painting a Vienna Beef umbrella, someone else doing a door of an iconic mill, and people along the river. I turned to Nancy and said, “I want to do that.”  Reading a banner over the main street, it was the first time, I learned the words, plein air, as in Plein Air Festival.

Retirement looming and the hours it brings, might have been the biggest catalyst, but I think the brightest sparks offered the opportunity to be outside, as long as I wanted,  doing something creative, alone with people.  I knew nothing about paints, painting or perspectivehat, but that didn’t deter me. I’d watched my friend Lynn go from knowing her sign to digging in and not only learning astrology, but becoming the Astrologer to Oprah’s astrologer.  My friend Veronica took a pastel class and within a couple years exhibited work. I knew I needed to buy a lot of paper, a few good brushes, some paint, and get humble. The learning curve would be steep.

Within a week or two, I found a one day class at Lill Street Art Center in Chicago, registered for a week-long class with watercolorist Tom Schaller at Madeline Island School of Art in the Apostle Islands. That's where I met Steve Puttich and learned that there was a group called the Plein Air Painters of Chicago. The first Saturday I could, I went to one of their paint outs to see the equipment used. It just happened to be at Montrose Harbor and Carl Judson, The Guerilla Painter was visiting with his truck of wares. Stephanie Wiedner introduced herself and encouraged me to meet people. I did and I was hooked.

Since then I’ve taken loads of other workshops at the Palette and Chisel and elsewhere. I've learned from Errol Jacobson and Stuart Fullerton. I've painted and painted and painted. I have more than 30 paintings and sketches of one single scene, in every season, at Fort Sheridan… none are good.  After a couple years of interminable humbleness and frustration with watercolors, a well respected artist, Tim Clark told me I needed basics. I didn't understand exactly what he meant, but I started back at the beginning.  Figure drawing to understand what I’m seeing, fundamentals to understand pigments and washes and lines. I switched to oils and a 7-week perspective class. Who knew there were algorithms to shadows? It's all helped.

I registered for the plein air event in Cedarburg as soon as the 2017 event was open. Two months prior, I called the event-runner to understand the consequences of quitting. At that time, I could’ve gotten my $60 entry fee back. I didn’t quit then. Twice, in the last month, in spite of losing my fee,  I made plans to do something instead of going to Cedarburg, but I rescheduled. A week or two back, I put in a sizable order for paint supplies but left the box unopened in the kitchen. Yesterday, I unwrapped them and added them to my working kit.

My car is packed to leave for Cedarburg Plein Air Event and I will leave in a little while. I wanted to take a couple minutes to reflect on getting to this point. I’m doing a lot of self talk and internal wheelin and dealin… you don’t have to submit anything, go have fun, no one has a masterpiece every time, meet people, there will be artists of all skill levels, the weather is going to be beautiful. Mostly, I’m eager to be there. I know someone will walk by me and say, “I wish I could do that” and I will assure them they can. 

Dabbling Is My Creative Process

Dabble. Onomatopoeia? I think so. I like that… a term that blends writing and the sound of painting. Not having thought about this for more than it takes to brew a Moka pot of espresso, I declare I am a serial dabbler. And, I am good with that.

To dabble for me follows in a vein like the stages of grief... only different. I try something like, non work-related writing at a class at Taos Summer Writers Conference.  I deny talent. I write more stuff, get workshopped and then get frustrated… I am not as good,

as creative, nor as grammatically correct. I take a class, try a different style, a different length, a different genre. I chafe (more onomatopoeia?). I cycle back to frustration and take another class, join another group. A couple people respond to an odd piece that resembles a poem but, in my mind needs an illustration. I try something – plein air watercolor painting at Madeline Island School of Art in Lake Superior. I deny talent. I paint more stuff, get workshopped and frustrated… I am not as good, as creative, nor realistically correct. I take a class at the Palette and Chisel and on line at Sketch Book Skool. I try a different style, a different medium, a different process and chafe some more. I stop and blog about my process. I put words to my painting. I paint scenes to my words.  I'm blogging... while the paint dries.

I declare acceptance of my process - Dabbling.