Rocks

Hehe yesssssss... go THAT slowly! The wet or damp blending technique as I like to call it is faster but involves more skill. We do cover that in the Flowers classes as they lend themselves to it! Enjoy all your classes and hope to see you again soon!

Thanks for tagging me in this @Nadia Khan. Its great to see that with patience and slowness you have made great progress! It is inspiring! I really love the colours. I will definitely think of the sleeping baby metaphor too@Vaishali Prazmari! It has motivated me to get back to it, I've had to take a break as I've just been doing a very different course on Illustration. I'd also like to learn more about the wet technique so will hopefully have the chance to take some of the flower courses and the rocks course in the future.

returning to this post after hearing from @Sarah Blick about similar struggles starting out with rocks....this painting never quite got finished, here's where I got to:

I think in many ways this was more of a learning experience, my next painting using rocks was the one of the baby simurghs from the Shahnamah and something really "clicked" there. Starting with the wet shading:

spending time on the pardakht:

slowly adding lines:

coming into focus:

and the final product:

the process of creating this took quite a bit of work (the photos are spread out over the course of 5 weeks, and that included a couple of evenings a week of painting outside class) and looking at how I've progressed in the past year I'm realizing that I should probably go back to rocks work and see how I have improved since then. In particular Vaishali's flower courses have really helped me focus in on both my wet and dry blending techniques and given me a much deeper understanding of the kinds of relationships between brush, water, paint and paper---there are certain types of alchemy that occur when circumstances are right.

I suffer from my impatience like yourself Nadia ! For me what works best is preparing my work space for calm; I like to paint with relaxing, meditative music in the background, I set a comfortable cushion behind my back, I make sure I switched off my phone/emails and then I can start; as my body feels good, and my mind is in peace, I can let go of the outside world, and I realise then that my impatience is gone 🌷

Hehehe ;-) I won't judge you at all, no worries ;-)

But I will give you one of my crazy strange metaphor-tips.

Yes, slow down. Slow down, slow right down as if you have juuuuust finished feeding a small baby and thankfully they have fallen asleep at last - but your arm is trapped underneath them and you need to take your arm out veeeeeeeerrrrrrryyyyyy slooooooowwwwwly from behind the back of their head and it's imperative you don't wake them at all during the arm removal process otherwise you will never make it to the toilet and you're desperate to pee. THAT slowly.

That is an idea of just how slowly you must paint - don't wake the baby! See if that helps ;-)

Another tip: lots of students say they hold their breath when they paint important long lines... don't do this... you need to keep breathing, people... but as Nadia rightly said there are ways to manage your breathing. Your technique sounds really interesting! I use more of a yoga pranayama technique which is to do with the stomach as well, as it stills you, and on the out breath you can do the line. Not on the in breath as is commonly thought, as if you do that too much you will get light-headed and that's not good for painting.

I will look up Buteyko breathing as it sounds fascinating! Thank you!

I typically imagine Vaishali judging me if I don’t slow down. 😋 No, but seriously, on the conceptual side, I’ll use my laziness as a support. I think of the expression “haste makes waste” and I recall that my laziness makes it very painful to undergo the time-consuming correction of haste-created errors. I also (try) to be mindful of my breathing, leveraging it as a way to get me into the “rest and relax” parasympathetic mode. I’ve been learning about Buteyko breathing, which encourages nasal breathing that is silky, even and veeeery gentle (almost imperceptible)... like that of someone who has been sitting on a meditation cushion for some time.

Btw, I really love the colors you choose for your rocks image. And the shapes and colors together would actually make a successful abstract piece too! I hope to see the next stages of this painting. Rock on! ⛰️