Hannah's First Art Lesson

HANNAH AND HER PAINTING

There aren't many things more satisfying to an artist than being able to pass along one's skills to a willing student. It ranks right up there with selling a painting, as far as I'm concerned.

I've already written about my little friend, Marie, who lives next door and who is so excited about learning to be a real artist. And now I've found another willing student – Greg's friend, Hannah.

One of Hannah's favorite past times is drawing. She draws just about any subject at any time when she has a few moments to spare. She was even caught drawing a picture of Greg's dog, Star, from an image on his cell phone. Believe me, that's a challenge that most artists I know would not want to take on. Many individuals who think they want to become artists begin by declaring vehemently that they hate to draw. Not Miss Hannah. She loves drawing so much that she will draw just about anything that presents itself.

A couple of weeks ago, Hannah and I devoted an afternoon to her first art lesson. I gave her a variety of potential subjects and she immediately chose the most difficult one – a camellia in full bloom with many layers of petals. After looking at the set-up through a viewfinder, Hannah chose a composition that most beginners would have avoided like the plague – an extreme close-up on a relatively large piece of paper. This girl was serious!!!

Within the blink of an eye, Hannah had her drawing finished and was ready to start her painting. With music from "Phantom of the Opera" playing in the background, she was off and running. In three short hours she made the progress you see here. One more session will finish this painting. I can't wait to see the finished product where the leaves take shape and the center of the flower will be her well-placed focal point.

Now I ask you. Is Hannah's painting not wonderful so far? Hannah understands what makes an interesting composition, using lights vs. darks, the value of squinting, painting shapes vs. objects, and how to make round things look round rather than flat. She just jumped right in and tried everything I told her. There was no holding back because she was afraid she'd mess up what she had already done. This girl has no fear!

One of these days I will be able to say, "I knew her when……" What fun!

Open Mouth, Insert Foot

You will soon see that, although I had an opportunity to do so, I did not kiss the Blarney Stone. I should have.

Every St. Patrick's Day brings special memories of our trip to Ireland in 1998 with our friends, Camilla and Norm Perrill. It also brings memories of two faux pas that the Perrills and Carl will never let me forget.

We rapidly learned that Irish pubs are the very best places for lunch and they're also great for just hanging out and observing the locals. If you want to talk to the Irish while you're in Ireland, just go to a pub and you'll get all the conversation you can handle.

One thing we didn't know about was the Bank Holidays when it seems that everyone in Ireland has to go somewhere for the weekend. Suddenly the little town where we were staying was packed to the gills and we couldn't eat dinner until 9:00 p.m. Meanwhile, we found an un-busy pub on the outskirts of town to while away the time. We were the only patrons.

Knowing what vast quantities of Guinness the Irish consume, we were, nevertheless, saddened to see that the bartender was already so far gone that he was having difficulty speaking. As the Irish tend to do, after pouring our drinks he joined us by the fire and we began talking. We were stuck discussing the trials of driving on the wrong side of the road, etc., while listening to his slurred speech. The bartender offered that his mother and her friend rented a German car. She was driving on the wrong side of the road and came to a bridge with no guard rails. The bridge was only as wide as the car. His mother's friend turned to her and said, "Now DON'T PANIC!"

Trying to make friendly conversation, I said politely, "So are you German?" whereupon he replied, "NO! I'm Irish! I just have a speech impediment!" Trying to recover with at least a small shred of composure, I said, "Oh. I thought you said your mother rented a German car." "She did!" he replied. "She was on VACATION! In GERMANY!"

So much for jumping to conclusions. As it turned out the bartender had suffered a stroke at an early age and hadn't been drinking Guinness at all. Norman almost had a stroke himself from trying to keep a straight face during this exchange and he vowed to never let me forget it. He hasn't.

Later that evening as we arrived at our car about 10:30 p.m., a man pulled up beside us in an old sputtering car with no headlights, parked, got out, and said, "Air ye enjayin' it?" I thought he said something about jail so I said "No." He was so astonished that we had to sort out the conversation in order for me to explain that I really was enjoying Ireland. Given my track record, I decided to keep my mouth shut for a while and let someone else – anyone else - do the talking.

Two faux pas in one evening were just too much.

Why Are Some Paintings Special?

Artists who paint for the sheer love of creating art paint what we love. We are driven to produce beauty and we always hope that someone will come along who loves our work as much as we love the act of creating it. Whether or not that happens, we keep on painting.

Many of our paintings never find a home while others seem to fly out the door or off the walls of a gallery almost as soon as they are finished. Once in a while, a particular painting becomes a personal favorite. There is something about it that says, "I am special." If asked, we would be hard pressed to say exactly what it is that makes this one painting different from all the others.

My latest painting is both an inspiration and an experiment. It came about one evening while I was preparing for a long telephone chat with my friend, Camilla Perrill, who spends her winters in Florida. Camilla and I share wine time. Wine time in our households begins at 5:00 p.m. - kind of a joke that has evolved as a good time to sit down and enjoy our glass of wine before dinner. Sometimes Camilla calls at wine time and sometimes she doesn't call until wine:thirty or I might call her at wine:forty-five. We like to say that we enjoy having wine together apart. It's our special time.

On this particular evening, I had barely settled into Carl's recliner when an unexpected streak of sunshine came streaming through the window and turned all of the objects on the table beside me into a fantasy of light. I grabbed the camera and took a picture, one-handedly, while talking to Camilla. That was the inspiration for the above painting.

The experimental part came when I began the painting. One tried and tested technique for creating a focal point is to surround it with darker values. Those darker values make the viewer's eye go directly to the lighter part of the painting. I wanted the shadowy figure in the background to be my focal point but it was surrounded by bright, bouncing light. Would the same theory work in reverse? I wasn't so sure. My other challenge was that I have never attempted to paint so many clear, crystal objects – especially while looking at a blurry, out-of-focus photograph. It was a recipe for disaster. Instead, the painting does everything I want it to do. It is one of my favorites.

I took it to our Southern Colours session last Friday where it was pronounced a success. Several of my most talented artist friends announced, without my asking, that their attention goes directly to my shadowy figure in the background. Carl loves it. I love it. But even better, Father Paddy loves it so much he immediately asked to purchase it. I had to tell him that it is already committed to a gallery but, if it doesn't sell there, he will get first dibs.

I named the painting 'Bird Girl' because the shadowy figure is a replica of a famous statue in an old Savannah cemetery. She stands on our fireplace hearth. The original Bird Girl was featured on the cover of the novel, "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" and was in the movie of the same name.

Father Paddy didn't ask the name of the painting – he wants it, no matter what. Now I wonder what would attract a Catholic priest from Ireland to this particular painting? Why would he immediately love it? After looking at it carefully, I think it might be that he sees a lot of symbolism in it. There is the glass of wine, perhaps symbolic of the chalice or the water into wine Bible story. He may be seeing the shadowy figure as symbolic of the Madonna and the globe as representative of the world. Or maybe he just loves it without really knowing why.

I'm going to ask him one of these days. Meanwhile, what do you think?