Today started with another rigorous morning of seeing and drawing exercises. This kind of study takes intense focus and isn’t fun. Understanding and practicing how to translate the world onto a surface is hard work. But this foundation sets the stage for the freedom to play later.
Yes - that is a giant pencil that we had to draw with - holding it like a toddler with our non-dominant hand.
I have always thought about light in my work in the sense of the lightest lights and darkest darks. I believe this is an important guideline and I teach it to my students too. But these past few days of getting back to the basics of value- especially value in terms of color- have completely shifted how I will approach light in the future.
The afternoon was time for another extremely important reminder… that you can make any color in the world with a set of THREE primary colors (Red, Blue, and Yellow). And from that phenomenon, you can then create an infinite amount of tints using white. As a new encaustic painter (about 15 months), it had never occurred to me to start with the primaries. Instead, I was mixing from colors that a manufacturer created. How boring! And yet, another reminder of why returning to the basics is so important!
This revelation allowed me to be much more confident and free when working with encaustic and I was a painting machine today. I worked up quite an appetite from all the rigor and play and was delighted to find word magnets at the restaurant while waiting for dinner. These will always make me think of college and also my favorite ninja poet, Maya Stein.
Why do I NOT own word magnets!? It was a good set too!
Crush Beauty by Erica Engfer Pizza
I’m the best kind of exhausted by crushing beauty today. I might swim badly tomorrow (stay tuned). And I definitely enjoyed these views walking out of the studio and up to my room.
Good night.