Thursday, 14 August 2008 - 12:35 AM EDT

Hi Carole :)

Keep in mind that I never really did watercolor painting before I took this workshop. Like any medium, it's going to take a lot of practice, trial and error on my part to get comfortable with this, apparently most difficult medium to work with.......................

I guess thats how we all get good at what we want to achieve!


FlowerPots

(wet on wet method)

Excellant, it must be very hard to use this kind of painting?


Streetscape

My favourite :) and though i'm no expert you certainly accomplished a lot with this one :)

Didn't do anything worthwhile on the fourth day, since I bailed out early because I was a bit out of the loop, with my son's surgery looming the next day and all (even though it has been postponed)

Show's the kinda spirited person you are to even consider this under those circumstances!

And there's no way in Hades I'd show you what I did on that first day so...yeah, what you see is what you get basically. (oops, just realized I didn't sign those two pieces, I'll get right on it!)

Well i see alot ;)

So critique away....I know you wanna! ;)

In conclusion i kinda think you had a great successful opportunity to do something

that brought out some of your abilities in just a few days of instruction, even though

you are quite successful ordinarily..............

What do I have to say?

Well I had fun, and that's pretty much it. *shrug* what more do you expect me to say?

Fun good and learning new ways even better..................

I know they're crappy but they are stepping stones to learning. There.

Crappy hmmmm i don't think so you did well !

And last night I had an urge to play with my pastels again...

That's what it's all about Carole giving you the urge and feeling you want to do more work....

I always catch myself 'off guard' it seems. I start to draw without direction and stop to look at it at different intervals and think...hmm...doesn't really look like anything, but then I realize that I am layering and blending my colors, and I have to say, I am starting to pick up on a few of its characteristics.

It's your inner ideas coming to the foreground and exploding onto canvas or paper

that gives you a liberating adrenalin rush i think. I always feel better when i have been able

to look back and think i enjoyed that or the results are there to see what i've been up to.

I get dirty as all get-out (which I rather enjoy) and then after a while it starts to come together. But I never know what I'm drawing until it appears beneath my hand.

Kinda going on ajourney and don't know where you going til you arrive ?

The whole process is a kick in the pants as far as I'm concerned, because it blows me away to see something emerge from my seemingly aimless beginings.

It's fun to see a piece come to life :)

Didn't i say that ;)


Out Of The Blue

Your favourite colour.............

As you can see I sort of jotted a few lines down, it was something I wanted to experiment with, but now I'm wondering whether I should finish this little poem.

Give it your best shot and see where you go.

I'm also surprised to see that I've applied some of the things I've learn at the watercolor worshop to this piece as well.

Money well spent, time well used...........

Well, Summer's not quite over yet so...Toodles~

Hope your boys are doing ok.....and of course you ;)

(even though I might have thought differently during today's wicked, wicked hail storm...Got pics, will post!)

Looking forward to seeing them.

Take Care and keep up the good work,

John,

swalk

Thursday, 14 August 2008 - 4:50 AM EDT

Lets critique (or pretend to), hahahaha, even though will have to do it more from memory as this internet connection in La Caire is soooo f&%*ing slow it takes about 20 seconds to scroll your post up and down.

the first one - looks great, love the way you have left the outlines of the flowers and the pots vague and did not try to overdo it. I like the mix of colours very much, especially if you look at it closely and then move back and take a total view of it.

Streetscape is great too, I like the perspective of distance and diminishing sizes but I must ocnfess that the reflectivity of the street made it appear like a pyramid in the first glance, hahahaha, I'm sorry but couldn't help thinking of the Louvre pyramid and at first glance I was kind of taken aback because it looked so perfectly like a pyramid. Anyway ignore my ignorance of artwork. This one is so soothing and makes me want to be in a certain remote Spanish neighbourhood, remembering the jewish quarter in Cordoba as one came out of the steps of the orange courtyard and turned towards those neighbourhoods with narrow streets of cobbled stones and flowerpots bearing the season flowers in elaborately twisted and turned wrought-iron balconies making one wonder about the inhabitants of them and wishing for a mysterious hand to slide out between those curtain folds and drop a flower down as if by accident...

I love the pastel and biting my lips to not say how erotique it looks from what it appears to me , perhaps its just me being my usual oversexed (curse of the phallus) self - shaking my head to dispel sexual thoughts and looking at it objectively. love the theme it is so delicious and just makes me want to..... sighs. You are doing marvellously and smiling to myself thinking tenderly and feeling proud too for little reasons that only you know.

keep drawing, keep writing, keep smiling, and keep loving and just keep being you because that is simply a breathtaking experience watching you being you.

Yours

Thursday, 14 August 2008 - 9:57 AM EDT

Hello John,

You are just one big sweet ol teddy bear is what you are ;) 

Well ok, maybe it's just one side of who you are, but it is very sweet of you to take the time and indulge me with your thoughts and comments like you do.  :)

Thank you, the boys and I are fine...I guess despite the daily rain storms, we're trying to cram as much summer activity into what's left of summer vacation, as is humanly possible ;)

(phew! just survived another boy X 3 sleep over)

I hope you have a wonderful weekend and that you get to journey a wee bit yourself!

Take care~

Thursday, 14 August 2008 - 12:07 PM EDT

My Dearest H :)

I knew you would not resist the temptation (to critique that is) lol 

You know that all art is best viewed at a distance…the not so great stuff you can look at, posted up close on blogs ;)

Ok at first I thought, wtf is he talking Pyramid for?  I dunno *shrug* he is in Egypt at the moment…

But then I went back and stared at it for a few moments and PRESTO there it was…lol and then I thought…Woah!  But you had to be looking at it like you do those funky 3 D eye maze tricky pieces where you start with your nose stuck to the artwork, then move back slowly and keep staring at the middle and then let your eyes do the rest…it does look like the Louvre Pyramid, hell I couldn’t have done that if I had actually tried to! hahaha

*ahem* erotic?  C’mon dude, I wasn’t even remotely aiming in that particular direction, sheesh!  Cozy or intimate perhaps?  Yeah, I’d want to walk up that street and maybe lean against a wall to absorb some of the sun’s warmth and maybe inhale the sweet fragrance wafting from the flowerpots or balcony boxes along the way…catch a few stray notes of someone softly humming a tune…yeah I’d walk up that street …you coming? ;)

Though I think it is a bit cliché…I mean everyone wants to paint a street scene or water lilies…and yes I’ve painted/drawn them too…however, cliché or not, there are things to be learnt in doing them.  Just as I’ve always thought…still life…eeeh, I can do without painting or drawing an apple or a pear…but now I know that it is good practice to get your color values working with/for you ;)  So perhaps I will be drawing a bowl of fruit in the future or…more hairy alien flowers(that you kindly neglected to comment on) which was really me playing with colors trying to get some light to mix and mingle with the darks, getting to know my medium.

In any event, I am going to have fun in the months ahead :)  and will look forward to a time when I can venture forth and paint swampy trees and maggot-infested road kill, just because nobody else does!  LOL I’m kidding *gak* that’s actually gross!  (guess I’m just a girlie girl after all ;)

And thank you my friend for your kind words, you totally redeemed yourself! hahaha