Painting!!

In the middle of studying the cranial nerves, I took an hour to paint!

Way back in August or September, my roommate suggested that we decorate by painting some blank canvases. I was fine with blank walls--they looked really Carmelite, but I wanted to be a good roommate and hanging stuff on the walls certainly couldn't hurt. We bought two three-by-four foot canvases, a bunch of paint, and some snazzy brushes at Hobby Lobby. Then...the canvases sat blank for months. We had to think of things to paint, prime the canvases, and draw some pencil lines. These steps aren't very impressive, and when they're spread out over months of busy life, they're even less so. So today (when I finally applied color to canvas) was wonderful!

The painting is going to be of a darkened theater, with five period silhouettes in the foreground. Right now, I've painted the side of the theater (dark and grey as the light from onstage filters across it) and put some leftover black paint in the middle of the silhouettes (it looks really weird--sorry about that). The third picture is the rough draft I created on my computer, which I scaled to the canvas before I began to paint.

I remember liking to paint as a kid, just like everyone did. I was sad to lose art in seventh grade, and sort of sad to not paint in high school. All through those years, I'd have these great ideas for paintings, but I wouldn't have time or tools (or talent!) to execute them. However, I'm committed to stay with painting now--it's so wonderful and addictive! The upper left corner of my painting is an inky black (not quite black--there is some red and blue in it, but it's still very dark), and it was tremendous to watch my brush change the canvas so dramatically.

If you watched the video I linked above (or just the last few moments of it), then you saw a nun writing an icon. For some time, that has captured me completely! New aspiration: become an iconographer.