I was not in the mood for painting faces when I started painting today, but I had no idea what to paint. I don’t really do this, but I know a lot of artists will just paint their supplies when they are stuck, so I thought I would have a go.
Fun fact – you can feel like you have become proficient at one kind of subject, and so there’s less of the Critic Chatter when you pick up the brush because you have developed some self-confidence, but as soon as you turn to a different subject matter, that Critic Chatter sees an opportunity.
As it chattered away, I hunted out an object to paint to do a bit of still life, and settled upon my sponge brush collection, which I keep in my retired Pokémon mug. It was a favourite mug for a long time, but it developed a crack on the inside, and had to be retired from caffeine delivery, so it now holds a bunch of sponge brushes.
I really enjoyed painting it, even if I don’t think I quite “got” the sponge brushes. That’s just an invitation to try again another day.
One thing that went through my mind while I was painting was the difference between painting this, and the way I used to feel at college when we were told to paint objects and still life set-ups. There was a real focus on realism and precise depictions, and it was off-putting. This was fun.
Now, I get it – it’s the same thing with portraiture – learning the skills needed to create a likeness are a good foundation for then expanding on those skills to loosen up and create something with a bit more soul. If that makes sense.
Just musing about how different it is to paint a still life with my scratchy brushes and my looser style than it would be trying to recreate the thing with photo-realism type painting, and some dusty art lecturer who thinks women shouldn’t be painters anyway in my ear.
Anyway, after this warm-up I got into one of those excellent head-spaces where I was buzzing about working on this thing, and then working on that thing, and then everything got interrupted by water.
I went to rinse off some brushes after cleaning them, and the water from the tap was running brown. Ugh. Now the Fire Brigade had just been in the street for the second day running, this time they had been messing about with the water supply, so I assumed they had done something which resulted in brown water.
Phoned Scottish Water, and was assured it was just sediment disturbed by whatever they had done, but I had to run the tap for an hour to run the sediment off.
If you have been reading my blog for a while, you may know I have some history with getting into The Zone and then having a tap running water… so I stopped painting and paid attention to the tap, and that, reader, is how my painting day ended.
Also being mildly pissed off that in 2024 women still have to declare ourselves in terms of a relationship to a man (‘is that Mrs, Miss or Ms?’) when all we are doing is reporting a water fault. Come on, get over it.
Also I found a book I really, really need. I mean NEED. But I just got three new art books, so……..
Til the morn,
Suzanne
165/200
Thrummie Bizzum 
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