Collective Sigh

Day Two, Year Two

We went to Fisherman's Pier with the smell of fish and the air full of gulls. This is where I painted a lobster boat last year, the first painting I liked, the one David said I should frame and put on my mantle.

His demonstration is of a red building that seems to be in a lot of his paintings. The sky is gray and he makes the window seen through the open door effectively part of his composition. He is so good. I forget to take pictures of his demonstrations. My camera battery is unreliable too. While he is painting someone comes and tells him that we might want to move...they're bringing in a truck to pick up a huge mast. They offered us 20 minutes. 20 minutes was ok anyway. David handles pressure well. I think he likes it. But I never did see them come get the mast.

I paint a small ship head on. I don't know what kind it is or what it is used for. The air smells like dead fish and I want to go near the lobstermen and listen to them sounding like Mainers, but I go to the same spot I was in last year. The boat is attractive and is painted dark green and red, my beloved Seattle colors.

It takes me a while to decide how to set up my composition. Composition, that is what I really wanted to learn about this year. I cannot remember anything I may have learned about composition in art school. Perhaps I should have played less frisbee and done more homework. To frame pictures I look through my camera lens and move it around until the grouping pleases my eye. I have learned that you can move things around any way you like when you are making art.

While my big painting dries I do a sketch of the same scene on my post card sized paper. While that dries I go back to my big painting. I like my ship but I'm not done when it's time to go to critique.

I talk a little with some of the other class members.

He goes through all the paintings and I like a lot of them. When he gets to mine it is the last one and when he holds it up there is a collective audible response. I am shocked. They really like it, I guess. I do, too. It is totally different from the bright and primitive work of yesterday.

He says he hates to use this word, but this is an almost perfectly painted picture. I am shocked again. I know I am trying to get a basic shape to make a piece of art on the paper, and I feel I understand a little better what he means when he talks about this, but wow. He uses the word economy, which means I am not overpainting and being fussy. Good thing I ran out of time, I may have gone there.

I decide I'm not touching this picture, lest I ruin it, though I decide I must try to repaint it and finish it with just a little more 'information'. David tells me how HE would finish the bowsprit (or whatever it's called, the thing coming up off the front of the boat like a trumpeting elephant) and I make a mental note. I think this class is a little better than last year.