Don't forget to message me your draft of a staement or bio if you signed up for next weekend's workshop.

Let's try this again. My thought is that we can have a challenge inspired by the Critique Club meeting each month. What I'm left with after today's meeting is a curiosity to hear more about Stephanie's dark, back, Fire Woods and the experience of making that pastel painting of them! The Challenge should you choose to accept: Post a painting to the community feed that was a profound experience to create and tell us the story.

...made some of the final decisions while completing this last painting. 1. I felt like the space heater was too dark, dragging too much attention down to it, and it's a bit awkward. I have purposely left it in even though it's a clunky shape and subject because it WAS there, and I care about that in my work. I want to solve the awkwardness in some way, even by just accepting it. A while back I invented the red and orange in the heater grates which I loved, it's playful. But it still was feeling heavy. 2. In photoshop I tested a theory that lightening its value could be helpful. 3. I went ahead and lightened it a few times. I was surprised at how light I could go because of that very light value behind it in the far room. 4. Next, I wasn't sure if the composition was too crowded on the right so I experimented by looking through my photos for something I later (than this reference) had hanging on that wall, again truth of moment has become increasingly important to me. I overlayed the two paintings I later had hung on that wall onto my wip in photoshop to see if it was better. Immediately NO! I decided to stand by the interlocking L shapes of the original composition. 5. In the end I was very tired. This is a HUGE painting and adjustments are laborious. I did not yet solve the heater to my satisfaction but I need rest. Overall the experience of making this painting was bumpy and awkward and full of the acceptance that I was making a humongous painting that I had more questions about than knowing/confidence. I started it in a very different internal space than I am in now. In 2022 was excited and wanting to make a kind of comeback after returning to SF and coming out of a block. So... this experience was like an epic journey!

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Babayaga's manicure (jk): Figured out the logic of the light after some back and forth on my pink lamp extraction painting. As I'm removing the table/lamp character from the room it's in and floating it in the void... I realized I did not need to depict how the lamp affects the void. It can simply float graphically in the black. This was a delightful epiphany. This pic is when I was struggling with the pre-epiphany background. Pink interior: finally found a color and value for the outer room wall that worked. In the reference it's much darker and true green, but that wasn't conveying the appropriate value difference needed. I also reworked the colors and values around the open doorway many times to get satisfaction in harmony, subtlety, and mark. Culminating in the elaboration of the swirling light wafting into the room which I'm really delighted by. I find that I'm working more from imagination as I near completion, existing in my painting and its needs over the reference's. I'll finish it very soon. Small neighborhood scape: a romantic little painting I'm working on of the view from my studio window years 2015-2018. I think there are lots of images from this window in many seasons. It would be a lovely little series. Think I'll go look for them.