"Right" Brain Up!

A good friend of mine is a wonderful painter and also a retired art teacher. She had been giving private group art lessons for a year or so now and asked if I would be interested in joining.  I politely declined. "Ah, no way, man! I can't draw my way out of a paper bag and am pretty sure I could never progress much past the stick person".   But because Pat gave me the shpiel about using your right brain and how doing art would be good for that, and because I was at the cottage and so in a more right brain frame of mind, and because I figured I was using my left brain too much and should try to be more creative, I thought- what the hay- no harm in trying, right (brain)?

So my first three hour session was coming up and I gotta tell you, I was not looking forward to it.  For one thing, on the extracurricular front, Mr. Lovely, E and I were into "Breaking Bad Binging" and this right brain exercising would be interfering with that. (Isn't being able to appreciate Walt getting out of his shell by cooking meth and Jesse "yo"-ing and calling everybody "bitch", right braining enough)? But I had blown $34(big investment!) at my local art store for supplies so I was sort of committed.  Pat had mentioned that there would be tea and coffee, so I knew I had to get my several GOWs in before I went. Since the art class was called for 6:30 and I had only come home from work at 5:55, I had time for only 2 quick shots of Kim Crawford, (for fortification) and half a slice of pizza before I had to leave. So how was I?

Pretty awful- I have to say. Pat is a really good teacher but I'm sure I was the worstest student everrrr. I twitched, grumbled, moaned and swore under my breath- and that was all within the first 10 minutes. She gave us a good drawing of Irises to draw- and told us all the useful techniques, (but no tracing- why not? do you mind?) to get us to "see" what was on the page- turn it upside down, quadrants, don't look at the page you are working on etc. but I would not, could not draw what was on the page. I think I could "see" it- but I could not reproduce it. It was making me sweaty, anxious and crabby to be quite honest.  Pat could see my anxiety and tried to give me a simpler project, (involving lines instead of curves), which I managed to screw up as well. The best part was the colouring in or shading as we in the art world say.  I had a bit of trouble but you really couldn't tell that much.

Value added Iris drawn and colored in by yours truly

If you have to squint to see the picture it's ok because apparently sqinting is a part of doing art. That part is fun. Also wearing the beret- that part is good too.

Here's the thing- it was hard- there was math-like I had to make equidistant squares on a paper, I had to use a ruler to judge which part of the drawing was higher than the other- I had to be precise about where to start and stop, I had to be careful, -this is all left brain stuff - not right brain at all. Was art really a left brain activity masquerading as a right brain one? WHOA! This is big and requires further investigation.

But first- this was our last assignment- can you guess who this is?