Practice

I don't have much to say or many thoughts on my mind tonight. The day has been fine. The quiet after the storm. Uncomfortable with lingering traces of electricity.

One thing painting BIG is teaching me is that you need to practice to fix a shape in your head to understand it. I need to look at something hard and draw it in a variety of ways to get a fix on it. I can't draw faces or bodies because I have not sat down with the real thing or a picture and practiced. I don't really understand the form.

Thinking about it, there is only one form that I have practiced, over and over, well two. I used to draw celtic knots but I used a ruler for them, being as how they were precise, detailed forms, dependent on their geometry to work. The other was horses.

I loved horses. I drew them for fun, copying pictures from magazines. I rode as well and also worked up the local stables for the love of horses and extra free rides. I even used to set up jumps in the garden and pretend to be a horse. My Mum still finds that amusing....

There was one picture I did of a horse. I think it was the one I was most proud of. I made a discovery. I learned how to shade things in white. I realised that white was all colours, so if you shade a horse with all sorts of colours, without getting too bright, it can make it look white. It was awesome....

There seem to be a lot of horses turning up in BIG. Maybe I should paint some too. Or maybe I should take what I learnt from painting them and apply it to something else... Practice so I can do a decent job of painting it...