Learning

I guess that we never stop learning or wanting to learn. I want to learn how to wear red lipstick. I, who rarely wear lipstick at all, remembered reading an article by a (male) makeup expert who said that older women look good in red lipstick and then I saw a picture of a woman with beautiful silver-grey hair , shoulder length and smooth, wearing red lipstick and I was sold. So yesterday, I bought red lipstick. In fact, I dragged sister Vicki all the way to Knoxville to shop with me. Now I have found out that wearing red lipstick takes practice. If it smears, everyone knows. If you rub you lips together a little too far, everyone knows. And I will have to be careful at church tomorrow because I don't think that altar guild ladies would like trying to get my red lipstick off the purificator after the rim of the chalice is wiped.

My mouth is not actually this crooked, I have just rubbed my lips together crooked. And, by the way, taking a picture of yourself never really works all that well. But maybe that is why the mouths I draw are all crooked.

This fantastic picture was taken in the studio where I was working on two pieces. Suddenly I realized that I was hungry and then further realized that it was 3:30 and that I hadn't eaten yet. I did have a coffee with lots of milk earlier, so that had been holding me, I guess. I ran through the rain to the house but decided not to brave the rain again to go back out.

I have been working on this grid piece and was just about ready to cut it down the middle. It was leaning so to the left and made me think of the old cheer "lean to the left, lean to right, go down the center and fight, fight, fight. I was tired of fighting, though, and about to give up.





Finally, I straightened the left side, blackened the right side and changed the bottom. The characters are supposed to mean "zen garden" although I was feeling anything but zen. It is still not a good piece, but it is better and I have learned a lot in the making of it, so time has not been wasted.
 Below is the newest beginning.


I love these colors but find pale colors difficult to work with. I hope that I can do this one, but am not sure where I am going. Do you see a woman fleeing across the moors (or somewhere)?

Dean is going with the fence, finally. One section up and five to go. Above the installed part will be lattice, the horizontal and vertical kind instead of the diagonal. The whole thing will be painted a creamy white. The fence to this point has taken a lot of time and it is most likely over-engineered, but as long as it goes up and we can let the dogs out into the yard knowing that they can't run off, I will be very happy. Meanwhile, I am learning to be patient.

Finally, I have been reading The Children's Book by A. S. Byatt. Chrissy West(Chris.Westcreations.eu) mentioned it on her blog and I got it on my iPad. The author is English, and the iPad made looking up words that I wasn't sure of (the English talk soooo funny) easy when I could just tap the word, tap "define" and there was the definition. I was surprised when I began looking at my new background to find how much the reading influenced what I saw in the "pour". Good books stay with you for quite a while. Perhaps they change the way you perceive things. Perhaps they change you. They can certainly help you learn. This one has a lot of history and makes you look into yourself.
That kind of learning isn't always comfortable, but is always worthwhile.

I would love to hear from you, as always, and hope that all is well . What have you learned lately?

Comments

Vicki Styons said…
I just now received notification of your new posting. (2:20) I wondered how Joanna knew about the red lipstick per her comment on FB. Curious that I got notification so much later than she.
Chrissy said…
I use a small lip brush to apply lipstick. I'm never without colour on my lips as I'm so pale. My son when he was very small said, Mum, when you haven't got on make-up you look cross.' Point taken. You can be more accurate with a brush (lips seem to lose their definition as we get older) and besides, you can get to the very last scrap of your favourite lippie!

As your paintings show, you are comfortable with strong colours (I'm the opposite). I liked your left-leaning picture.

Just so long as Dean's fence doesn't do the same!

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