Painting The Town Pastel

Lyn and I had a random week off. It’s one of those weeks where you need to book it or lose it so we didn’t have anything planned. While thumbing through the Plough Arts Centre catalog I saw a ‘Spring in Watercolour’ workshop for when we were off. Doing a bit of painting is something that always pops into my head every so often, despite having no talent in that direction whatsoever. But judging by the entrants to the Turner Prize, ‘talent’ is not something that seems to be required. If a pickled cow or an unmade bed can be considered ‘art’ then surely my daubings might be okay. For me, oil painting would have been by medium of choice so I could put on a permed wig and paint some ‘happy little trees’ Ala the legend that was Bob Ross but this didn’t seem to be an option and you’ve got to start somewhere.

Classroom Set Up.

Initially I thought it was something that we could both do but Lyn gave a very definite ‘No’ to that suggestion. It was down to me to put up or shut up so I got my bank card out and booked it. £50 for the day and all materials provided. I assumed it would be just me and a couple of octogenarian widows called Rita and Beryl who would be in attendance. It wasn’t until the morning of the event that I realised it was a Saturday (I really have lost track of the days of the week since (semi)retiring) and children might be involved. I went back to the info just to make sure that I hadn’t missed ‘ideal for the kids’ in the blurb. Phew, nothing like that but to be on the safe side I loitered outside the door to see if I could hear any overly loud high pitched voices.

Fortunately it was only adults and my initial thought of there only being me and 2 ladies was bang on! Not octogenarians and not called Rita and Beryl but to save my embarrassment of not remembering their actual names I shall stick with those nom de plumes. Beryl was there because she had been gifted the workshop as a birthday present. Rita was apparently a regular and had attended previous courses. We sat down with all the accoutrements laid out before us and John, our tutor for the day, made a quick introduction and asked if Beryl and I had any previous experience. The closest I ever got to art was ‘O’ level Technical Drawing but that didn’t really count. Beryl though had done ‘O’ level art and with Rita being an old hand this meant I was already bottom of the class.

Ready To Go

Our first painting was to be some… yellow flowers… pansies? I don’t know! This exposed yet another weakness of mine which is my complete inability to recognise plants. I can tell the difference between a tree and a flower but my flower knowledge is divided between ‘rose’ and ‘not rose’. This isn’t due to some medical condition it’s simply because I just don’t care past the fact of wether I can eat it or not. I’ve never understood the whole ‘giving flowers’ thing, much to Lyn’s eternal disappointment. Why would you kill some plants to give to another person and the only thing they can do with them is put them in a vase and see how long it takes for them to rot! What exactly are you trying to ‘Say With Flowers’?

What it should have looked like

The ladies of course knew what they looked like but John had to show the dunce of the class and after drawing a few flower heads on the paper these were then masked up using masking liquid. We then went on to the actual painting part which showed up a bit of a weakness in trying to do watercolour. If you put it on an easel to demonstrate it would all just run off the wet paper. It turned out it was fortunate there was only 3 of us because a full class might of made it a bit more difficult. I’m not going to run through what we did. If you’re interested then book a workshop but I did learn a few basics of painting using watercolour.

Fridge Worthy?

More importantly I learned 2 very valuable things. The first is that I’m a terrible student in a classroom environment. Despite being a 55 year old man who was interested in the subject and had paid good money to be on the course I found my mind wandering on to other things and I would take on just enough knowledge to ‘get the job done’. This isn’t a symptom of encroaching senility because this is exactly what I did when I was at school. I had to keep mentally slapping myself to pay attention not only to what John was saying but to what I was doing. Despite the mental S&M I know I could have and should have done better but I’m basically the dog in the film UP! constantly getting distracted by squirrels.

Signed By The Artists

The second thing I learned is that I’m not very good at painting… (squirrel). Quite frankly my pansy leaves just looked like cucumbers and neither of my paintings had depth or perspective. The sort of thing a 5 year old would proudly present to a parent. My second attempt of doing snowdrops came up better and was selected by Lyn to go on the fridge so there is the potential for improvement. I feel I could even take a few art supplies out in to the wild and almost look like I knew what I was doing for the first few minutes at least.

Alas though my dreams of becoming a bohemian artist and dying in an absinth fuelled stupor has taken a bit of a knock. I did enjoy the day and it was definitely worth the money. Let’s face it there are far worse things to do on a Saturday and most of which would cost you more than £50. Matthew said it’s a very ‘old person’ sort of thing to do and he’s right but then I am. It’s also the sort of thing that only older people have the time and money (especially these days) to do. I’m going to keep looking for different courses. Maybe I just haven’t found my medium or my muse. There’s always pottery classes or if I get desperate I might submit ‘Shit Flowers in a Wood’ to the Turner Prize.

Shit Flowers In A Wood