My First Painting

Last night after dinner I took CootieBoy over to Michael’s (sans Cristan-recommended coupon since I didn’t read her comment until AFTER I got home), where I picked up some art supplies. I spent about $40 on supplies and opted NOT to buy the gesso itself since I found boards that already had gesso applied to them.

Upon arriving home I set everything out on the table and tried to think of what to paint. I remembered CootieBoy’s unused mural in his closet, so I pulled that out and quickly traced the fish onto the larger gesso board and got to work creating my first masterpiece.

When finished I did take a picture of it to send to flickr, but then deleted it because the picture didn’t really show off the details (like the jewels that I placed in the outline of the fish). So I’ll have Denis take a better picture tonight. For my first attempt, it’s strictly okay. It’ll look good in CootieBoy’s room (he was thrilled when I showed it to him this morning), but it’s not something that would make money in any way. I think it’s because I used watercolors, which are very particular and require a finesse I don’t have the patience to learn. So I may go out at lunch and buy another gesso board and try again tonight with my acrylic paints that I used for CootieGirl’s mural.

I also realized this morning that it might be better to paint the background colors onto the board BEFORE I do the tracing. The second painting I did, which was more abstract, became a mess the minute the time came to paint around my designs. To be frank, it’s just an ugly painting that will get put in the trash.

But the potential is there. I just think I need to remember that simplicity is key – that I don’t have to use every color of the rainbow on every painting, and I need to have patience as I figure out just exactly how I want to do this.