Page 31 - 2021-04 Courier.pub

Pandemic Paintings:

I moved to The Club in 2014 and was jealous of all the people with free time to
take art classes during the day because I still worked. In my 20’s, after complet-
ing a teaching credential and teaching for 2 years, I changed careers to computers
and programmed mainframes for 35 years. In the evenings I would play French
horn in a band, symphony or pit orchestra. After I retired in 2017 from both pro-
gramming and the Solano Symphony, I took Linda Kissela's watercolor class at
The Retreat.
I’ve learned so much from her and my classmates. With one painting due every
week for class, I had a hard time squeezing in my own original paintings. Then
came covid. Class was cancelled and I found myself with a plethora of time to do
what I want. So I am calling this presentation “Pandemic Paintings”
I mostly use watercolor because the colors are transparent and I can layer them to
get depth of color. Our instructor Linda has shown us the benefit of using
‘gouache’, which is defined as an opaque watercolor. I was able to use it to great
effect in ‘The Golden Gate’ painting. It took about a week to draw the bridge.
The bridge, sky and ocean are gouache and the mountains and foreground are wa-
tercolor. Watercolor is hard to control and the gouache made my job much easier
with these large canvases. Both the bridge and egrets are 24 by 36 inches. My
normal paintings are 9 by 12 inches.

I wanted something fun in my living room. I had 2 large, ugly framed prints left-
over from the model décor. I decided on Herons. I cut out a cardboard ‘pattern’
for the body and flipped it over for the second bird so both would be the same shape and size. Then I painted the bird and grasses using water-
color. Gouache covered the entire background with one coat.

After the storming of the capitol in Washington, D.C, I felt compelled to paint it. It was very cathartic. I found myself tearing-up while draw-
ing it.

April 2021 Page 31