Taking Time to Paint
Pansies
Taking Time to Paint
During this time of year, as winter starts winding down and spring awakens with new possibilities and gifts, it take a little more time for spring to visit us at The Grand View Ranch because we’re located in the mountains at a higher altitude. After spending months inside the house, surrounded by snow, and watching the trees stand naked after losing their leaves because of the cold, I find myself lingering a little longer at the Home Depot nursery allowing the bright colors of the spring flowers to saturate my eyes. Pansies always make me smile. Their brilliant colors and delicate leaves make them fun to paint, and staring at their colors for a few hours especially when the world is still gray outside my studio window, makes the task of painting them very enjoyable. Before I left the nursery the last time I was there, I scooped up a few of these colorful posies to recreate them in my studio.
Painting flowers from life is a very challenging thing to do. No matter how fast you paint, the flowers change constantly either by following the sun that is beaming through the studio window or wilting from the heat of the light bulb. To paint beautiful flowers, an artist needs to have an agile hand for accuracy of brush strokes, an educated eye that sees the nuances of color and light, and confidence that the hours of painting day after day will produce a painting that sparkles with life.
In my power to create class, I constantly promote the commitment to painting every day, and yet, painting seems to be the first thing that artists drop when time runs short and there is too little time to get things done. Whether your desired art form is music, writing, painting, or even cooking, it is the most important thing you can do every day. Most of the excuses seem silly when you look back over the week and ask yourself why you did not paint this week. Imagine how you would feel if you had painted five paintings this week. What insights would you have had? What discoveries would you have made? Painting is not just something that you do when it is convenient to do so. If you wait until you feel like it or wait until you are inspired, you will never excel in the discipline of painting. Choose to paint first and then find the time to get the other stuff done. Believe me; the other stuff will still be waiting.
And the next time you walk past a flat of pansies or a bunch of roses and you think, “Wow! I would love to paint those flowers,” and then you hear yourself saying that you do not have time to paint: stop immediately, buy them, go home, and turn your phone off, and paint, paint, paint!