September 29, 2016

• Looking For Vincent van Gogh

  It has been nearly 2 weeks since I went with saintvi to the Wine and Canvas night in Stevensville. I had only been to the location in Granger - in a new strip mall. This one was at an Italian restaurant. Saintvi said that it was a hoity-toity eatery and she was right. They had a very different Ladies bathroom. Which is not the point of this post but was one of the more unusual aspects of the venue. As you walk in a bronze statue reproduction of Michelangelo's David greets you. It is not, I repeat NOT, life size. It stands about 4 feet tall and is on a marble table in the corner. It is obvious that myriad visitors to the ladies room have rubbed part of David's anatomy causing it to be very polished and shiny, but has not resulted in it becoming any larger... Anyway as you go about your business, instead of music or Italian crooners they pipe in an Italian language lesson. I visited the restroom twice that night and was unable to retain any of the phrases in Italian although I remember them in English, "Do you have red wine?" and "I am ready for the check. Thank-you."

  But more to the point we were painting a Wine and Canvas version of van Gogh's A Starry Night. It was painfully apparent that most of the class was unfamiliar with his art. Here is the original.
  

  We started with a blank canvas and went immediately to a solid blue. It looks easy but it takes a lot of work to paint a canvas a solid color. Your arm gets a real workout when you are trying to do it rapidly!
  

  The next part moved so fast that I was too busy to take a picture of my canvas. We put in a horizon line, made spots for the stars and then the big swirls in the sky. No sooner than the stars were made we were instructed to make the reflections in the water. Hold on you say. There was no water in van Gogh's painting. You would be right. However we were doing a starry night over Lake Michigan with a lighthouse... Yeah I know that is ranging pretty far from the original but this was not about painting a forgery of the original. So the next photo showed the painting pretty far along. With the negative space between the stars added to make them pop out.
  

  Then we added more color to the stars and moon and the land for the lighthouse.
  

  Next it was the lighthouse. This was the hardest part because you had to draw straight lines. It was really difficult for the people who had been guzzling alcoholic drinks! The instructor had been stressing that this was a "loose" painting and everyone needed to relax and "drink more wine" so they could paint in a less uptight way. It didn't work for most of the class. This became obvious when it came to the lighthouse.
  

  After I got the lighthouse in place I needed to put the top on. Unfortunately my star swirl was a little too low so it wasn't positioned behind the lighthouse to illuminate the glass windows at the top. But a little help from the instructor sort of fixed that problem. Then it was adding the yellow and some orange and we were done.
  

  The girls across the table from us (drinking chocolate martinis) made their paintings smooth as did a number of people. Saintvi said mine was the best in the class but I like hers too. I'm pretty pleased with the end result.
  

  • 6:47 am
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