Painting Class!

I am very psyched! I had my first painting class last night (6 to 10 pm, though the time flew), and boy was it ever fun! We learned how to mix all kinds of cool colors, and of course color mixing is one of the best ways to play that I can think of.

I'm a bit intimidated by the notion of painting a landscape, a portrait and a still life - all in class - as well as doing three paintings at home on my own, all in 6 weeks, but I look forward to the challenge. After discussing it with Ro Geseck, the teacher, I plan to do all the assignments but to modify the final project to make it into a mandala. More on that, anon.

I discovered that there's a student in the class who will be going to Drexel in the fall to work on her PhD in art therapy, and she says she'll be delighted to talk to Z about that. That was exciting, too!

Yesterday, I completed the 8th chakra assignment for my Goodwin lesson, incorporating all the colors and symbols of the seven chakras in my own way. I mounted it on what I'm increasingly thinking of as my current color, orange. Here it is:
And then, because N had asked me to make a mandala for her while she was at camp, and wanted me to use sparkles, I cut some slivers and circles from paper, added some more swirls and the words "Niko's mandala" in lots of places with gel pen, and made the following:
It's light & airy & kind of frou-frou, just a silly little thing, but it was fun to make. It was glad to have found some small, very slender scissors - they made the cutting of those tiny swirls of paper much easier. So those were my two mandalas for yesterday.

Today I did a painting exercise in mandala-form; at first I wasn't going to call it a mandala, but it was restful, right-brained and when I was done I felt as relaxed and at peace as I do when I do other mandalas, so I think that counts. Last night in class we'd done shadow color mixing - taking two complementary colors and mixing them in stages to move from one to the other in seven steps. I hadn't felt I'd mastered this, so I did it again.
After looking at it, I felt it needed something still, so when it's dry I think I may go back & add something. Not sure yet - I'll wait & see what my mood indicates. I'll let you know tomorrow!

~Namaste