My First Masterpiece!!!

Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to draw.  I was jealous of anyone who could paint.  Every time Bob Ross was on TV painting those gorgeous landscapes, I watched in awe, knowing I was never going to be able to do that.  He made it look so easy!!

So when my friend from my college Photography Class posted her paintings on Facebook, I became the same obsessed kid I was in grammar school.  I never in a million years figured I could do something like that, mostly because I live in a tiny farming community full of thieves and druggies.  Yes I did check out classes at the college, but their schedule never meshed with mine.

When Renate said to come to her class, I jumped on board!!  Are you sure they don't mind?  I've never done this before.  No problem she said.

I got to class with all my goodies and spread out across the table.  I have to say, there is an order of things.  I got it all wrong.  Eventually, I'm sure I will organize my workspace better.

I learned all about paper and how to tear it in pieces to get the required rough edge.  It's the weirdest thing I've ever seen.  I can't even explain how it's done.  

Next up I spent about 60 minutes putting paint in my pallet box.  There is an order to that also.  In no time, I had paint all over my fingers.  At last, she said "what do you want to paint?"  I looked through my phone and showed her a couple of my photographs.  Okay ..... let's start with Mary's coffee cup.

Ummmmm not these pretty flowers?  Seriously, she put the cup in front of me and said ... draw it.  Talk about pressure!!!  I drew the cup on a piece of old dirty paper, donated by my friend Renate, who then showed me her style of painting.  There's a "style"??  Believe it or not, everyone paints in completely different ways.   

You can see at the top ... the H looking thing ... where I tried her style and LOVED it!!  Okay then!!  By that time, the big hand was on twelve, followed quickly by the little hand.  Time to go.  I loaded up all my stuff, leaving my newly acquired watercolor paper on the back counter.  

Once home, I figured I would redraw my cup and paint it in magnificent brush strokes.  Alas, I had no paper other than the piece Renate gave me.  I made several frantic phone calls, finding everyone out to lunch.

So here it is in all it's glory, my very first watercolor coffee cup, painted on dirty paper with an H across the top.  Don't laugh, it's a work in progress!  I actually had to look on the internet to determine how to make gray for the shadow, since that's not a color I had.  Once you paint a little, you cannot add other colors until the paper dries.  So every painting takes several days, if not weeks, to complete.  

The next thing I knew, I had chunks of paint all over the back of my hand.  Where did THAT come from?  Then I stuck my pinkie finger in the red!  Well for heaven's sake.  Now it's all over my shirt and jeans!!  AND THE COUNTER!!  I spent an hour cleaning up before getting back to my cup.

It's a good thing I didn't pay a fortune for art classes.  Hey, it's a start!!  At any rate, my homework this week is to draw something to paint NEXT week.  I looked through all my pictures and decided they were too complicated for a beginner.  Maybe I'll paint a glass of water this time!!

In the meantime, I finally contacted the church where we met and picked up my paper.  Here's another secret I learned.  You can TRACE your picture onto the paper instead of drawing it.  Okay then ..... I got this!!!!

Hopefully I'll figure out WHAT to paint before next week.  In the meantime, I wonder what I can use to get red paint out of my natural stone countertop.