What's that saying...

Three's the charm? Well, I don't want to know how many times I've tried to get this blogging thing going but that number just grew by one.

I had a cool experience today and thought I’d like to share. I felt like taking a break from my “real” job of home-based typing and looking at some images on the Internet to serve as resource images. Of course, it's not like I need any resource images. I have real folders in file cabinets and e-folders on my computer chucked full of resource images. I couldn’t paint them all in multiple lifetimes. Looking at images is just so inspiring though.

Today as I began to look through the images for “windows”, I realized that I had been collecting my images in the wrong way from the very beginning. I would see a nice photograph and think, “Oh, that would make a nice painting.” So, it went into a folder marked “windows”. Today as I looked through the Web site of photographs, I began to think of the components of the image. Instead of “flowers”, “children”, “doors”, etc., I also had folders marked “studies in perspective (architectural)”, “studies in texture”, “odd”, the last category being for images with unusual perspective.

When looking through the images today, I looked to find half a dozen images that would challenge my experience at this point but would teach me a lot if I were to be able to achieve the desired effect, whether it dealt with perspective or texture or whatever.

As I continued to cruise the Internet, guilt began to set in because I needed to do my “real” work. Each time I thought “one more screen”, I would reach the end of that screen and give myself permission to go for just “one more screen.” Then, I came across what I knew I had been looking for without really knowing it. It was a picture of a bottle sitting in the corner of a window sill.

One of my first sketches when I began this journey 10 years ago was of a memory of a sweet potato or yam vine growing in a Ball jar on the window sill in my grandmother Hazel’s kitchen. I’ll share the funny story associated with that sketch in another blog. Don’t let me forget. Anyway, in my Internet meanderings today, I found a wonderful image of a Ball jar serving as a flower vase and then this image of the bottle/jar sitting in the corner of the window sill. That was my cool experience. So, I’ll take that as a sign that I need to get on with that painting.

I’ll keep posting, good Lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise.