"She touched your painting? Oh no, she di'n't!"

Mondays are usually dreadful, except Monday is my oil painting class.  I'm starting to get the hang of it, mixing colors, getting the right texture, getting paint actually on the canvas.  So I am really looking forward to the two hour class every Monday.

This week I started to make a lot of progress, there is paint on 100% of my canvas and it is starting to look less cartoonish and more like an actual rendition of my picture.

The class is made up of a few funny characters (myself included, I suppose).  5 senior citizens, 3 people in their 40s, 1 young adult, and myself.  There is this one 40ish woman...if I say only what I've learned from the first class you can 'paint' a picture of what she would be like yourself...she is single, lives with a few cats she adores, and is starting this business painting people's pets.  Right now, she is painting a deceased black lab...and keeps saying things like 'It's a 'she' - we have to give her respect...remember, she just recently passed.' whenever anyone accidentally says something like 'wow - he is looking good.'  Okay - you can catch my drift.

So this week, she mentioned how she is going back to school to major in art.  I replied, though I probably shouldn't have...wow - you must really like this, since you are in art classes for fun on top of school.  But anyway...

At the very end of the class, when I was finally getting my groove on, I was painting my water reflection using downward strokes.  I think this woman wanted to be like the art teacher, so she corrected me saying that I should always paint water left to right, so I can blend it for a reflection...like this...

Yes, she took my brush & made a huge stroke...it actually messed up my water.  I was pissed, but I tried not to show it since most of the class are repeat participants and I'm brand new.  So I tried to get it off in the last 5 minutes of the class.

I'm looking forward to Monday's class, but not looking forward to having the weekend disappear.  It's taking all my willpower to not go steal my painting from the classroom to work on it a bit at home.  Gosh...at home, I have plenty of other things to do.

But here is the picture of what I am painting.  If I get around to it on Monday, do you want to see how it progresses each week?

Ireland - picture taken by yours truly - c. 1998