Posted on by Carol L. Douglas

The most important rule of painting

It’s a start. Maybe I can even finish it before I leave!

Last March when I taught in Sedona, it was t-shirt weather. Our biggest dilemma was which day we should visit the winery. This year the weather has been terrible. Even I, an incurable optimist, can’t deny that.

The historic snows and rains that have pounded California have not left Sedona unscathed. Flood-prone areas were on high alert yesterday. State Route 89A closed in both directions between Sedona and Flagstaff due to rock slides.

Arizona has close ties to California, and people here have shown me pictures of their favorite ski resorts in the Sierra Nevada, where some places have seen close to 100 inches of new snow in the month of March alone. I’m from Buffalo and that number astounds me.

We’re not getting that, but we have had mixed precipitation and cold weather all week. It’s maddening when we’ve invited people to paint en plein air and they’re stuck inside, as beautiful as the teaching studio is at Sedona Arts Center. I want my students to be happy, and circumstances beyond human control are making that difficult.

“It’s the beginning of a new Ice Age,” I grumbled, and my student Maggie laughed and agreed.

Snow is welcome in December; at the end of March it’s just annoying.

This weather isn’t helping my slump

Maggie and her pal Beth wisely decided to paint indoors yesterday. The rest joined me at Secret Slickrock trailhead. Rain eddied and blew through the massifs, and Oak Creek roared in its rain-swollen channel below us. It would have been magical if the weather hadn’t been so stubbornly uncooperative. One by one, my students retreated to the warmth of their cars until it was just Matthew, Laura and me left.

I’ve been in a painting slump recently. There are all kinds of reasons for slumps, including health problems, pressure at work, grief and much more. Being able to identify the cause doesn’t necessarily solve the problem, but it does help me to feel better. And I know why I’m here. I’m spending most of my creative energy developing an online painting course. I’m alright with that trade-off, but it’s frustrating when I can steal a moment to paint and dreck comes off my brush.

Matthew is wearing three layers under that boilersuit. It’s a wonder he can stand up and waddle to his car.

But here I was on the top of a bluff and most of my students had left. I laid in a quick painting, breaking rules I drill into my students. I made no preparatory value sketch because I’d loaned my sketchbook out and hadn’t retrieved it. I did major design surgery in the middle of the painting. The painting is unfinished, because the rain and snow started sheeting down on us again. (Oil paint turns into stodge when it absorbs enough water.) And of course I don’t have a reference photo; I never remember to take them.

Yet I’m happier with this start than with anything else I’ve done since January.

Sometimes we go through dry periods. Sometimes we break rules we know are important. But the most important rule of all is to show up. Yes, you’re very likely to make a bad painting when you’re in a slump, but you stand a zero chance of making a good one if you don’t paint at all.

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