Course Review - Ian Roberts' 'Brushwork & Color' Course

Earlier this month, I finished a Brushwork & Color painting class with Ian Roberts.  It was transformational.

There were a few challenges:

• Ian is an oil painter and all the demos were in oil.  I am a watercolorist, not interested in working with oil.
• We had a specific set of primaries to use.
• I am an inveterate comparer of my work to others'.  This does not go well for me. 
• I wanted to stay caught up despite a number of other things going on:  big house projects, kids dealing with covid & college/job stresses, my own job, etc. 

Some of my aha! moments:

• A good Standard Operating Procedure will get you a decent painting regardless of whether you're having a bad day or a bad attitude.  Follow the SOP.  
• Green in bright sunlight can be represented by a number of colors that aren't actually very green.
• Start by thinking about the focal area; let the rest fall into place after that.
• You can't ignore backgrounds.
• Sometimes the 6th version is when you get it.
• Value studies are very enjoyable.  I don't need an excuse to do them.   [I feel a series of value studies in purple coming on....]
• I'm better at still life than I think I am.
• It is perfectly acceptable to mix all the colors I need to get a color/effect, despite the watercolor 'rule' to never mix more than 2 or 3. 
• Purple vines are freaking awesome. [I already knew that.]
• Evening light goes really pink.
• I know my watercolor pigments well and have an excellent grounding in color theory.  I can trust my choices in primaries that are appropriate for watercolor. 
• It is possible to paint flowers in large simple masses and have it work
• Consider everyone's piece on its own merit, not on how closely it matches the ref photo.  Look for the genius in their work.
• Goal:  Sing the song on the paper, with gusto, my way.   It doesn't matter how everyone else is painting the same scene.

Now that the course is over, I'm formulating my goal for the next few months.  It will probably have something to do with working through my own reference photos and seeing if some of the bad ones can be salvaged.  [Seriously,  Ian had us working with nothing but greeeeeeen ref photos that had good bones, and showed us ways of tweaking them to make them really interesting.  I am sure I can find ways to do that with my own ref photos.]

Here is some of my work from the course: 

Value Study

Muting Color: Still Life with Squash

Muting Color Exercise 2

Limited Palette: Purple/Blue instead of greens.

Painting Light 1

Painting Light 2

Poppy Field

Daisies

No More Goats

One of my loveliest friends was telling me about her 5 year old daughter, who is learning to deal with her older brother's teasing.  Her brother knows exactly what buttons to push to get a reaction.  My friend explained to her daughter that he was just trying to get her goat.  Even so, teasing continued, goats were got, and the 5 year old's exasperation would result in screaming for him to stop.

One day, the teasing started, and my friend heard her daughter scream at her brother,  'I  HAVE NO MORE GOATS!'...

I'm still laughing.

You guys, this is exactly how I feel sometimes.  I want to scream at the universe: STOP!  I HAVE NO MORE GOATS.

No more goats for the people who complain instead of ask intelligent questions, or who complain instead of try to understand.  No more goats for people who twist my words.  No more goats for the people who tell me not to feel my feelings. No more goats for the people who don't want me to be who I am.  No more goats for the people who don't want me to change.

No more goats for the part of me who is never satisfied with myself.  No more goats for the part of me that is always on high alert. No more goats for the part of me that catastrophizes.  No more goats for the part of me that says, 'yes' out of fear - and the one that is afraid to say, 'no' because it might upset the boat.    In fact, I have no more goats for the boat. 

I am getting out of the boat and I am getting my goats back. 

I've spent a lot of time thinking about Recovery this year.  Recovery is part 'from' [recovery from trauma] and part 'of' [recovery of what I have lost, which is my SELF]. I will recover my goats as I recover my self.  The big question is how does one recover Self? 

For me, there will be more No's and better Yeses.  I will spend more time honoring myself and less time trying to make other people happy.  I will start asking myself what I am doing out of fear, and what I want to do out of curiosity, excitement, learning, creativity, joy. I will listen to my Mind, Heart, Body and Soul. I will give myself all the permissions I need.

When I get my goats back, I will find new ways of keeping them.   It will probably involve a lot of No.   No I won't be able to do that for you.  No I am not interested in participating in that.  No I do not accept your treatment of me.  No I do not accept your view of me and I don't care what you think I should do.  No I will not drop everything to fix this for you.  No I am not afraid of your feelings, and I won't protect you from my feelings.  No.

I can hear my goats coming back already.

Thinning

One of the garden skills I've been working on for the past couple of years is thinning. 

I'm really good at sowing a lot of seed and then it comes up all green and beautiful and I get really excited about growing food and then I get radishes and carrots that are the size of toothpicks.  

It took a concentrated effort to actually Pull Some Up so that the others would have room to flourish.  

It's totally a life lesson for me.  

Aside from dying inside every time I have to pull up a perfectly OK start of lettuce or arugula or radishes or beets or carrots or .... everything,  I get stuck at trying to decide exactly which ones must go.   

I finally developed a system where first I figure out how much room I want between plants in the end, then I identify the best plants so I can keep them and then I pull up the extras.    Tiny greens [micro greens] can go into salads if you don't want to waste the starts, or they can go into the chickens or on the compost heap.   No waste.  

I've been doing better lately and have grown the best radishes in the history of radishes.   Also, I have a row of gorgeous parsips now.    Also carrots.    Also lettuce.    My garden is producing better produce.  

Which is why I'm sucking it up and applying the thinning lesson to other areas of my life.    It's still a struggle.   I hate to pull things up.    I have trouble deciding which things should go.   When the feeling hits me I take advantage and thin what's in front of me and try not to worry about the rest.  I think very slowly, so I figure it's OK to thin slowly, too.  

Along the way, there are people who fuss at my choices and I'm learning how to ignore them.    It's flattering to be asked to do things, but it's not always good for me or the family.    Adjustments must be made.    I'm doing my best to adjust and so must everyone else. 

In the end, the adjustments will pay off and we'll have more room to flourish.

Homemade Cottage Cheese

Mmm.   Cottage cheese.   Creamy, a little tart, a little salty.   Great with pineapple.   Or tomatoes.   Or tuna.  Or on salad.   Or salt and pepper the way my dad ate it.   [Come to think of it, that was the way my dad ate everything.   Except pie.]  

Anyway.  I love cottage cheese.  K1 does, too. K2 does, too.  So, I used my last gallon of fresh milk from The Swiss Connection to make some homemade cottage cheese. 

By the way, cottage cheese and farmer cheese are the same thing.    Farmer cheese is British.   I think.   Maybe.    At any rate, it's not Hoosier.   

Making cheese is a lot like making bread.   It's a zen thing.   You have to become one with the curd, one with the dough.   It takes time.   You can't rush it.   You can't force it.  You have to work with it.  You have to let it guide you.   If you do, then the results are spectactular. 

Making cheese is a freakin' life lesson.

Ahem.

Anyway.   I followed the recipe for cottage cheese in Ricki's book, Home Cheese Making.   This is the basic process:

• Heat the milk to 72 degrees.   I used a gallon of fresh milk [minus 2 cups of cream that I used for the mascarpone.
• Add mesophilic culture and stir well.
• Let sit at 72 degrees for 16-24 hours.
• Cut the curd into 1/4 inch cubes and let sit.
• Raise the temperature slowly to 112 degrees over about an hour [Ricki gives explicit instructions]
• As the temp rises, the curds and whey separate.  When the curds are hard enough, put it all in a collander lined with cheesecloth to drain.   Gather the corners and twist around to make a cheese ball. 
• If you want to have less tart cheese, dip the whole ball in ice water a few times.   
• Drain for 5 minutes.  
• Salt [We used about 1 T of sea salt].

You can eat it right away.   I kind of like it very fresh, at room temp.   A lot.