Gobbledygook (or, Katherine's Crazy Is Showing)

I started a blog post earlier today with a clear purpose in mind.  I knew what I was going to write about, and thought it'd be really good to get it out of my head.  Little did I know that I seem to have a condition of some sort.  Let's call it...Abstraction on the Brink of Lineality...??  (I like making up words...)

Here's the problem: I'm crazy an abstract thinker.  I'm an artist, after all, and am constantly pulling ideas together, then apart, and then together again.  (Consequently, I'm pretty good at fixing things, so that's a bonus.)  I can make up stories on the fly, and come up with silly creatures and characters and paint or draw them with some success.  I'm great at brainstorming and finding new ways to do things. 

Linear thinking, though...  Guh.  It's the WORST!!  Who wants to go from A to B to C to D and so on when it's so much more fun to start at W, jump over to L, circle back to O, and end at A?  

Whether or not I want to think linearly, I know I have to in order to get this whole art business going.  I have lists, and lists for those lists, and spreadsheets upon spreadsheets, and reminders on my phone and post-it notes, and still, I feel like my brain is swimming.  I want to make so many things!!!  But I have to think in a linear manner to get there.  I need to have a certain amount of money to buy a certain number of things so I can sell those things and make more money to buy more things to sell.  A B C A B C. **SNOOOZE**  (I need a business manager who works for paintings and high fives.) 

My brain is rebelling against me in this.  The abstract part of my brain is getting nervous, thinking this linear thinking bugger is trying to take over, and is trying to oust the interloper.  As a result, my brain is swirling as the two parts spar (I'd like to think they're fencing) and one tries to gain dominance.  (Hmmm...there may be a painting to come here...)

The odd thing is, I'm actually a fairly organized person in general.  I like to think that the left and right sides of my brain balance fairly well.  I've had a number of office jobs where I've had to think very linearly, I'm good at following a recipe, I read books from beginning to end (usually).  Yet I spend most of my life in the abstract world of an artist.  I feel like it should balance out.  (It doesn't.)

The point of all of this gobbledygook is that the abstract side of my brain is hindering me in many ways as I try to move forward.  (Technology is also hindering me quite a bit, which was actually the orginal subject of the blog post I began earlier and scrapped, because it went in 10 different directions and I couldn't pull it back together.*)  Nonetheless, I'm fighting back, and with the help of friends and family will soon have several ducks in a row (hmm...another painting idea...) and will keep moving forward.  

(As I've been writing the last two paragraphs, a part of my insane brain has still been mulling over what the illustration of my brain parts sparring would look like.  A paint brush vs a ruler?  Jumbled letters vs letters all in order?  The left half of the brain vs the right half?  Ew, no, I don't really want to draw brains.  That's partly why I dislike zombies so much - the whole eating brains thing.  It's gross!! On a slightly different note, my friend Cori once asked the very important question: why isn't it spelled zomby?  Cori also sent me a picture of what she imagined her brain looked like at a very stressful time in the semester.  It was Squints from "The Sandlot" looking sort of crazed right before he jumps into the deep end of the pool and then kisses Wendy Paffercorn "long and hard."  This (Crazed Squints), I imagine, is what my brain looks like on a regular basis these days, as illustrated by this nonsensical paragraph.)

Where was I?  Huh.  If I was thinking linearly, I'd go back and reread this post and make a grand, organized finish.  But my brain's been sparring with itself all day and is pretty tired, so I think I'll skip that and just put a photo here of the painting I did today: Automaton Katherine** thinking of all of the things she wants to create without a care in the world.  

Go to Instagram.com/michiganartiste for a better image!
If you want to, of course.  No pressure.

*I'll probably publish parts of that post another time.  I like where I was going for a while, but then it sort of got away from me.  I'll grab a lassoo and pull it back on track for your reading pleasure at a later date.  I mean, it had a great "The 'Burbs" reference!  Can't go wrong with that movie. 
** Why did I end up painting myself to look like an automaton?!?  No one knows.  My brain might know why, but it's certainly not telling me.

Painting Auction, Take 2!

Welcome back, everyone!

Today we're going to try the auction here on my art blog in the hopes that the commenting section will be less confusing than over on my website!

This is the painting on the auction block today:

The Circus in the Style of Paul Klee, watercolor on paper, 9x12"

The same rules will apply this week that did last week.  As soon as I post this (at ~8pm EST on 10/29/15), the auction will open. Comment below with your bid (bidding will start at $5) - each person should add $5 to their bid and continue on in that manner.  (You're welcome to add more than that to your bid, but I think $5 is a good incremental increase.)  Keep checking back from time to time to see if you have been outbid!

The auction will remain open until 8:00pm EST tomorrow (October 30, 2015) - you'll have a full 24 hours to bid!  At 8pm on Friday I will announce the winner!!  (Payment and delivery methods can be then sorted out between the winner and myself, usually via PayPal.)  

Please keep in mind that this is in good fun and keep things civil and upbeat.  Prints of this painting will also be available in the future if you don't win the auction!  If you have any questions, please email me at katherinedownieartist(at)gmail(dot)com!

And please stay tuned for a big announcement coming from me tomorrow afternoon!!

Bon chance!!

Watercolor Wednesdays

In an effort to get me back in the habit of blogging, I thought I'd start a new feature called Watercolor Wednesdays.  Last fall I began teaching watercolor at Two Twelve Arts Center, and in January at the Saline Senior Center.  It was a bit of an awakening!  Watercolor was my concentration in undergrad, and I spent a lot of time in grad school using watercolors, even when I began working with oils.  My graduate thesis exhibition was half watercolors, half oils.  (You can see some of my watercolor paintings on my website, here.)

Even so, teaching watercolor was very different than I'd planned. But then, so was teaching acrylics and oils when I first began that several years ago!  It's one thing to do a thing, another thing entirely to teach it.  I have a friend who is a theoretical particle physicist, and he told me that the further he got into his education, the more difficult it became for him to teach.  He said that he was a much better teacher in grad school than while he was working on his PhD - he got so into the deep stuff, he found it hard to resurface and teach the basics. And as an educator, I have been taught that someone who has just learned something is the best one to teach it - the way they learned it is fresh in their memory, so they can help another person find that same path.  

I mention all of this because I found it immensely difficult to backtrack in my brain to where I first started painting with watercolors.  I tried to rewind back the lessons taught to me at EMU by Maria Ruggiero, the watercolor professor, and have memories of color mixing and still life paintings.  I took those memories, did the best that I could, fumbled through, and finally came to understand what works for me as a teacher, and I hope translates to helping my students.

What has worked for me has been doing small studies rather than large, finished paintings.  I've even done this with my intermediate-advanced students, and they have said that it's helped them a lot to better understand the nature of watercolor paint and paper and how they work together.  That's been my experience, too!  I've never been one who likes to do a painting over again - I do it once, and I'm done.  But with these studies, I've really enjoyed doing them multiple times!

With my senior center students, who are mostly the very beginningest of beginners, I've had to step back even further.  I don't think much about how much water I add to my paint, for example, but that is a completely unknown concept to them, so I have spent many classes encouraging them to add more water!!  I think I may be learning more than my students!

I've enjoyed the process of learning how to teach watercolor, and know it will continue to change.  I'll begin today with a color mixing chart that I did in January - as long as I've been painting with watercolors (10 years?), I still learned SO much doing this chart! I wish I'd done it years ago.

And here's a quick example of what I've been doing with my students - going over step-by-step how to paint things like apples - an insanely difficult object to paint!

Next week I'll share more of the summery things I've been working on with my students!