Can I paint this photo? A scene in the Amish settlement outside Beeville...
By Kevin Williams
I've been a big fan of Cheryl McNulty's artwork which I've posted here a lot. Â And that got me thinking: why not try?
Painting is something I’ve wanted to attempt before but never gave it a go. Maybe I’ll be lousy at it, but maybe I’ll be OK. Never know unless you try.  My father-in-law had given me an Amazon gift card for my birthday and after sitting in my wallet for months I finally decided to use it.
I’ve never picked up a paint brush in my life (unless you count little kid paint sets) and I wasn’t particularly good in art class, so I have no reason to think I’ll be any great shakes at painting,but at least it is something I can try and then cross off my list.  I thought it would be a good creative outlet, an adult hobby that I could pursue since most of the rest of my free time is spent with my kids (that is not a complaint).  Sooo, I ordered a $15 watercolor kit off Amazon (oh, what the heck, thought I'd stick in a link).   When Aster and I were getting home the other day, she quickly spied the package on the front porch.
"Dada, I want to help you open it!" she declared.
Oh geez, I thought, so much for the non-kid hobby.
My $15 paint set
So I let her open the package as I explained to her that this was Daddy's "toy" and that she couldn't use these paints.  She could use her paint set while I used mine, that was a good compromise. She has a little kids paint set that she loves and dutifully got to work as I unpacked my sleek new paint set.
So, I thought the buggy photo at the top would be a good painting to start with because it just seems so simple...solid-colored sky, vegetation, and deep black buggy. Â Still, I quickly realized that it's tough to master the perspectives and angles. Â Those buggy wheels are what will probably really trip me up. The instruction manual recommends sketching your work first, which I started to do, but by then I was holding Beatrice. So as Aster painted next to me with her kids paint set and I held Bea in my lap (the notion of a kid-free hobby crumbled before my eyes) I sketched in pencil the buggy photo. Or attempted to. Â It's not a good partial sketch, but I was also holding a baby, so I was doing it one-handed. Â Not terrible in that context.
My half-finished, one-handed buggy sketch
Next week I'll attempt to actually put brush to canvas (well, it's not actual canvas,but that sounds better) and see what happens and report back.
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