Painting with Mom

Last Saturday my mom and I participated in Zionsville's Plein Air Paint Out. It was a very special day!

I never met my maternal grandparents and lived most of my life far, far away from other relatives. Thus, I think I am particularly conscious of what a privilege it is to have my mother alive and nearby! Learning from her art talent is something that I have always wanted to take advantage of and the only way it is going to happen is if I try to hard to make a priority of it.

In the four hours that we had, we managed to paint 3 different scenes around the village. Our favorite scene was 180 Main street -- a bright blue house with white trim and pink flowers. The best thing was the owner was so friendly and gave us a tour of her garden, fed us cold water bottles, and sat with Christina on her porch and talked knitting while mom and I worked.

Emily popped by to say hello and Christina walked around with us. (It used to be that Christina and I were always mistaken for twins. Now it seems that it is Christina and Emily who are the twins.)

It is not easy attempting art when you have a mother who is so talented (however that has everything to do with my own pride and nothing to do with my mom's). However, I finally realized I needed to throw that aside and start from the bottom up. I find it sadly humorous that so many of the lessons I need to learn in art are the same ones I need to learn in life: smooth the edges, values (dark darks next to light lights and a bit of the in between -- as in life, to be beautiful, has to include both the deep hardships and the great joys, often right next to each other), simplify, etc.

Here is mom's rendition of a back gate:

The back gate:

 I chose this view:

And came up with this:

At 2 p.m. we came back to the town center to post one of our paintings each for the art show.

Mom's painting is in the middle and she won second place in the amateur category!!!

People could sell their work too. This painting had $495 on the price tag (???)

We met the nicest artist and here is one of her paintings. It won first place in the amateur category:

This was mom's favorite in the show:

It was so fun to do this together!! Mom used to do this kind of thing with her mom all the time, so it kind of gave me a glimpse into their lives. I am always trying to paint my grandmother in my mind from the bits and pieces of information I have gathered over the years and this was another little part. It was a great day out!