koukla carolyn

Logs, pitt pen in sketchbook, 2008

On Saturday I took a class at the Worcester Art Museum called Living with Art. It was an art advice workshop and the instructor was Nan Hass Feldman. I have had good luck with the classes that I’ve taken at WAM thus far but I’ve never taken something that wasn’t focused on an actual art technique so I wasn’t sure what to expect. We discussed various art related topics such as the importance of time management, keeping sacred studio time, getting involved in art associations and the dichotomy between making art and going public with it. I really got a lot out of it and feel inspired to get more involved with other local artists. I have a lot of online art friends but I don’t know anyone in the real world so I think now I will make more of an effort to get myself out of my little bedroom studio and make some connections with other artists.

One of the most important things that was impressed upon us was how critical it is to be disciplined with your time, especially if you work a day job and do art on the side. I have known this for a long time but only recently began to get serious about it. It really is true that the most important thing is actually making art, not thinking about it or planning on it or finding other ways to avoid actually doing it. I used to hate actually drawing or painting it but I loved the results that I got. Now I have shifted more to actually liking what I’m doing regardless of how it turns out. I have also found that my quality has improved with more practice so it’s really a positive in all accounts. I have basically cut out TV completely as I think it is a huge time waster, but the internet is still a major stumbling block. That will probably mean being more selective about the blogs I read, but I do think that it will improve the quality of my life.

Nan was a really great instructor—I would definitely recommend any of her classes to someone who is looking for an upbeat, fun and encouraging teacher. She has a ton of experience as she’s been a practicing artist for over 37 years, with three studios and a huge body of work. She has a really unusual mixed media technique that she described to us. She showed us her pieces and her materials and described how she goes about it but we didn’t have time to actually see her do a demo. She makes a charcoal sketch first and then uses oil pastels and Caran d’Ache Neocolor I crayons to color it in. Then she takes watercolors and paints them on top of the oil based colors. This forms a sort of resist and the watercolors seep through any white parts and pool up and form interesting little blobs of colors. It is really striking with the metallic colors. You can see examples of them here. It seems like a really innovative technique and a fast way to get some really bold color. I think I will try it when I can stomach spending some more money on art supplies.

A note about the sketch above: I was visiting my parent’s house for the weekend and only had my Pitt pens with me so I couldn’t do anything in color, even though I was inspired to do a big, bold colorful drawing after that class I took. I drew these logs not because I really wanted to, but because the only warm place in the house was next to the wood burning stove in the garage!