Getting back into a painting habit

When I first got into painting I was so excited to use my new paints and kits I used to paint every day. I quit Facebook for a year and it was easy to find time after dinner I would paint my family of the food. But life got busy, travel, then the sales to replish my art supplies of course…

So now I have a lot of new art supplies but not the habit. Trying to declutter by selling things on Facebook marketplace has slowly snuck my way back into the Facebook doomscroll.

This time I decided to sign up for all the art groups so that my Facebook feed would be flooded with inspiration.

One of which was an ad for a free Anna Mason painting class claiming that anyone following the steps and  techniques could paint hyper realistic paintings. Now I have been on the emailing list for the chinoiserie painting class from Dianne Hill (looks great but not really my style) for months. I may have watched one or two but haven’t really attempted to do the painting class. 

So I’m not sure why I thought maybe this one would be different. Plus even if I didn’t do the class I’ve always loved reading about what supplies artists use.

Well after what seemed to be the 10th email reminding me to start the class, the last one I received finally convinced me to give it a go. Particularly the subject “Don’t save these for one day..” and the call to action button labelled “Ok, I’ll take 10 minutes for me” and yes the me was in italics. Thanks Anna you are absolutely right this is about me time. I was in the car on our 10 hour road trip to Sydney and had a break between feeding my daughter, so thought why not even if I have to use my data.

10 min turned into 45+ min and possibly another 1 hour after our lunch pitstop. I had only got to part 4 or 5. I finished part 5 a few days later and took another hour. So in total it is probably a good 4 hours per painting.

Anna provides a printout you can trace but only had my little A5 Hanemuhle watercolour book with me and so decided to do two one copying the trace as exact as I could from looking at it. I actually used a pencil and rubber which is strange for me because since moving to fountain pens I’ve mostly just been doing line and wash. The second painting I just drew free hand.

My first attempt #1 and #2 they both were painted together at the same time as following along with Anna Mason’s free online class. They would probably take approximately 4 hours for even a small A5 painting. 

In person the final product is less fluro and dark, however it is still fluro and dark.

So I decided to do another but short cutting most of the steps and just doing one light to dark later. I then did the light spots then dark and then used the left over paint to do the shadows. This took approx 30-60 min total.

Overall this highly detailed technique using transparent watercolours and thin wash, building up layers slowly over time, doesn’t suit my normal approach, however I had fun learning new techniques and I guess attempt #3 is my way to start to see this incorporated into my normal painting.

I’ll try to find time to keep practising this and I’ll also try to find time to do the other free class on the Pencil Calla Lily. If I can get my hands on some transparent lemon I might try this instead of the semi opaque Hansa yellow light to see if it turns out more like the sample reference and less fluro.

This has already inspired my daughter to give it a go and she’s started her first painting drawing freehand. Here’s her first layer that took all of 5 min… Might set her up with the class too.

If you’ve been inspired here’s the link unused to join https://www.naturestudio.com/free-class/

And more importantly this has inspired me to prioritise regular time for art me time… hopefully instead of doom scrolling.