Oliver made a genius suggestion back in June. He and I started attending
an adult painting class through the city rec department. There were a
total of 3 students in the class and last Wednesday was our last class.
Here are the paintings we created.
We started with watercolor and we got to create "plein air" by going outside to the park down the street. Oliver really liked the line of trees along the sidewalk.
I found a spot in the middle of the park that I had fun with. One of the days that we were out there I had a little girl come sit next to me and talk to me for probably 15 minutes as I painted. And as its been sitting on our windowsill, it regrettably got some orange Fanta spilled on it. Sad... But I really enjoyed this alot.
Next we did oil painting, and our instructor set up 4 glass vases and 2 white/cream pots. Oliver did a beautiful job creating the colors and everything. It's awesome. He decided he really likes oil painting.
I took forever doing mine. (so long in fact that I decided to artistically leave three of the 6 vases unpainted) I couldn't wrap my head around a lot of things. The colors, how detailed to be. We only met for an hour and 15 minutes each day and there were to only be 4 days set aside for oil, but we needed 5-i needed part of the 6th in fact. But there are definitely portions of this that were very rewarding. Finally understanding how to paint something to look like glass. Adding in the highlights at the end was amazing. It was entertaining throughout the different stages that mine actually reminded us of a Piet Mondrian piece like this:
Piet Mondrian Composition II in Red, Blue & Yellow via Wikipedia
On the last day, she wanted us to create "non-representational" artwork. Oliver used housepaint, craft paint, bubble wrap, he sketched the piece in the middle and then laid it on top. I had to leave that last class early unfortunately so I wasn't able to create my own. Our instructor, Lisa, was kind enough to send a blank canvas home with Oliver.
This was a huge highlight to my summer. One, I have always enjoyed art. Two, it was amazing to sit down for an hour and be forced to think about just that. I didn't think about the boys, I didn't think about work. Three, I had a permanent date twice a week with Oliver that was wonderful to do together. This definitely makes me want to have an art studio in our future home so that Oliver and I can continue to have this as an outlet even if we aren't professionals.
