"I am still learning"

"I am still learning" is a quote I share with my students all the time. It was reportedly said by Michelangelo when he was 87. Even though I have been painting for over 15 years and teach others how to paint, I am and will always be a student.  I've heard that if you want to become a master at something you need, as they say in Eastern philosophy,  "a beginners mind". That is, you have to approach things as if you are just beginning to learn, that same openness, curiosity, willingness to try and fail  as you did when you first approached something even if you've been at it for years and are possibly quite skilled. That openness allows you to continue to grow and reach new levels of mastery. Once you think you already know, the learning shuts down.

 In that spirit, I'm here in Arizona this week,  at the Scottsdale Artists' School taking a painting workshop  with Hedi Moran. We are studying approaches to paintings flowers in oils. My weekend experience with the floral design class (see Sat. 3/19 post) was  a perfect warm up for this workshop focused on  painting flowers.
Here was the still life arrangement I worked on today, trying out Hedi's approach which is loose and somewhat impressionistic.

We started with dark transparent colors and then built on opaque lights.

So here was the start to block in the entire shape of the flowers, vase etc.. as a mass.

Then I added in a background- at this stage you can hardly make out the subject form the background- but wait, we'll pull it out with the lights

Here's how it looked after adding some of the lighter colors  with more opaque paints. Still not finished yet, will work on  some adjustments and finishing touches tomorrow and will post the  painting once it's complete.