About a month ago, I made the conscious decision to shift gears and start focusing on freelance illustration, graphic design and my own personal art. I started painting again which makes me feel like a kid again, literally, sitting in my parent’s garage in Thousand Oaks can spending hours painting in oils.
When I decided to start painting again, I started with a still life with my stone buddha head I bought at the 99 Cents Store, a lemon, and a Crate and Barrel Italian style ceramic pitcher. I laid a navy twin sheet as the backdrop and got to work. As I was painting, and thoroughly enjoying the process, I started thinking back of when my mom enrolled me in a painting workshop with Fredrik Grue. I used to take oil painting lessons in Newbury Park at a studio called The Art Experience, run by Jean McIntyre. She used to point out how much I loved to use the teeny tiny brushes–I still do- and how Frederik Grue would favor tiny brushes too. He was showing his paintings in the Oaks Mall at the time so my mom and I headed down there to check out his work. They were stunning still life paintings. Super realistic, meticulous details, and beautiful. When Jean set up a workshop for him, my mom signed me up–which got me out of junior high school for a few days!
In his workshop, I recall having to get masonite board and gesso. As we applied the gesso to the board, he encouraged us to kind of design fanned out patterns with the brush and gesso to create a nice texture to work on. He then set up a still life of a vase, a Japanese bowl with a black wooden stand and plums. We were to draw the still life in pencil on the the gessoed board. I believe there were about 6 of us–all older adults, probably my age now! Frederik was a little frustrated at us in the beginning, thinking we all couldn’t draw. We then used an umber wash as the base for the painting. The rest of the process was a blur, but Frederik turned out to be a funny, pretty easy going guy. The end result for me was as good as a 13 year old could paint and that painting still hangs in my parent’s house today.
I did end up buying a used copy of “Beyond Realism: The Life and Art of Frederik Grue”. As an artist with no formal training, he was so fucking talented. I think I will try painting another still life but in oils this time, a la Frederik.