>Last night I went through the “what to paint” drama as I often do before Thursday class. Do others go through that anxiety too, I wonder? Anyway, I decided, rather than paint for others, this week I’d paint for myself and am doing a picture of the “Dragon Theatre” (Theatr y Ddraig) in Barmouth, Wales. The backstory is, I was scanning old photos last week for the “what to shoot” drama and came upon these old first-ever digitized photos we’d taken when visiting Wales in 1995 with David’s Mom who was raised there in Barmouth. It was too much work for last week, but yesterday, I cleaned up that photo in photoshop, printed a good, clear copy, used my handy dandy photo projector last night, and traced the main outlines of the image on a 16 x 20 canvas I was going to work on today. BTW, this tracing works far better at night in the dark since contrast and image are much clearer. And my projector’s the cheapest of the cheap but works just fine for what I needed it for.
So, cut to this morning: I was fine when I awoke, showered, had my morning coffee, but as I moved about getting things ready for Margot’s portfolio photo shoot and for painting after, I started feeling dizzy. Nevertheless, as I hurried about, I got worse and worse, but knew I had to make the shoot since Margot had put together all of her paintings to bring. I just didn’t know about the painting afterwards but hoped I’d feel better once out of the house and into fresh air. As I drove into Nashville, I wondered. “Could it have been the honey oat rolls I started yesterday and let rise overnight before baking this morning? Maybe the combo produces something toxic?”
Well, toxic or not, the photo shoot went well although at first I was still a little bit shaky, but I got focused on it and managed to (I hope) get great shots of each item she placed before me on the easel. At the end, though, the heat was cranked up and folks rolled in and there was commotion and warmth and crowds and I realized it would be most charitable for me and for the rest of the gang if I took my suspected germs and evacuated the premises, so I left after giving Margot the card from the Canon EOS I used for her pictures.
On the way home, feeling cooler, in fresh air, I figured a quick stop at Michael’s wouldn’t do too much harm. After all, I really needed drawing supplies and could always use more painting supports if any were on sale. Wouldn’t ya know? Canvas 2 packs were 40% off. And I picked up a gesso masonite board to try too as I’ve never worked on one of them. And charcoal sticks because, as much as I’ve never been one to draw and doodle, I figure I will only get better if I learn to draw!
Wish me luck.
Lesson for today: A cheap photo projector is great for enlarging fixed-size images so you can trace them onto canvas to paint.