Geese flying south, workmen, landlords, painting & selling a boat painting, painting on location vs. painting from a photo...

Geese flying south, workmen, landlords, painting & selling a boat painting, painting on location vs. painting from a photo...
11/18/11
10:09 am

She found she was not going to be able to write facing the sunny window. The sun was now at such an angle that the writing could not be seen on the machine. She had had to move her set-up into the shadow and turn so that she could not see out the window. Her sunny window view was one of her favorite parts about working on the Nanowrimo writing challenge.

That morning while sitting up in bed contemplating the day and getting up for it, she caught sight of a flock of geese in V formation. They flew from east to west across the top of her line of sight in the south facing window and when they were a distance away they turned south. This was not a huge flock. She had never seen them overhead that way or from such an angle. The line they created was just like the standard kids' drawing for flying birds - as if the flock was one huge drawing of a kids' flying bird. She wondered where that point was that they had turned south.

She had written a list that morning or the evening before of things she might write about that day for the challenge. Nothing from the list appealed to her yet. She had to remind herself of her mother's unintended advice about her grandmother being able to write about the most ordinary things and make them interesting. This had not meant to be advice, but was a simple observation about her grandmother's ability. That her grandmother could do this so easily, further meant that her mother was a reluctant writer herself. There was such a high standard to set oneself against. It was unfortunate that people just assumed they could not do the things they so much admired in others, assumed they did not have the ability, and assumed that it was a god-given ability rather than something one wanted to do and worked at doing.

The workmen had returned and unloaded more equipment and material down below. There were just the sounds of idle chatter. Perhaps they were waiting for a delivery of supplies. She could hear the beeping of a truck backing up, but could not tell where the sound came from.

This same work crew had been working on another building the landlords owned that she had been passing on her way to the library when she was going on foot. Just the other day as she got near the house she could hear loud singing coming from the house. The front door was open. On the stairway just inside the door was the larger of the workman merrily painting away at the stairway trim while singing lustily along with the song playing on the radio. His singing had been very cheerful. He'd waved his paintbrush at her in greeting. Whether it was just general friendliness or that he recognized her from previous work they had done where she lived, she did not know. She wondered what kind of entertainment they would provide.

At the supermarket the previous evening she had run into an acquaintance who had worked for the landlords for many years. She told the friend how much she liked being at this apartment and having them for landlords. The friend said, "They are wonderful people. I love working for them. I love coming to work. And their son who now owns the business is just the same." She was so glad to hear this. She had felt this from the time she'd first met them. She had wanted them as landlords ever since. This had not been possible until there had been a suitable apartment opening and until she shared her living space with one or less cats.

Meeting them was serendipity. One year several years ago, she decided she would make a painting of one of the boats in one of her many harbor photographs, with the purpose of seeing if she could then sell that painting to the boat's owner. She believed she did this just as a test or a challenge - to see if she could set out to paint something that might be of interest to a particular individual, (who she did not even know yet), and follow the action through to finding out who the owner was and then offering to sell them the painting. She did not remember on what basis she chose the boat she chose from her many harbor photos. She believed these had been new photos of the harbor she had taken just for the project.

She thought the project could be done very quickly. Usually when she went out to paint a harbor scene on location, it took just a couple hours. Why was it such a longer and more complicated process to work from a photo? It was agonizing. One struggled so much to get the proportions right. When one painted on location, one had to struggle as well, but because one knew the daylight was limited, that the subject could change at any moment, one had to just do it and live with whatever the result was. A boat was either constantly changing its position on the water when it was moored, or if at the dock it might soon be completing its business there. One had to work quickly when working on location.

It was such a different feeling to paint at a working waterfront in other ways. There was always the banter of the workmen and the fishermen as they went about their business. They always seemed to enjoy their interactions. They joked, exchanged gossip and news, told stories, exchanged information. They enjoyed their comraderie. They enjoyed the physicality of the work. And they enjoyed the machinery of it all.

11:09a 970 words - break
11:54a resume
She was dragging in her motivation to continue writing. It often happened this far in. This day especially, as she had several other projects she needed to get working on.

Large cloud formations were passing low overhead through the brilliantly sunny sky, from west to east. They were pulling up into little curled over peaks at the top much like the peaks that formed when one whipped cream to make fresh whipped cream from scratch.

The workmen had returned with more equipment. This time they had set up the scaffolding. It stretched past the bedroom windows of the apartments along the south wall and reached almost to the roof. She had spoken to them from the window and found out the basics of what she could expect. They would be starting work at 8 am. Once they got the crew together, the work would take 4-5 days, to shingle the whole south side of the roof. The singer was the one who did the talking, still in good cheer. She told them she hoped she would not have to rescue anyone.

The painting of the boat she had chosen from among her photos to paint, had been of one belonging to her landlords' son, though when she painted it she did not know any of them or even to whom that boat belonged.

Working from a photo was often a rocky start for her. She hated the struggle and frustration of getting the proportions just right. It took a long time to get the basic structure down accurately. Much of that time she almost raged with her frustration. It seemed almost impossible to keep straight how lines related to each other. Her perceptions kept getting confused over what she was looking at. Was something tilting up or down? How big was this in relation to that? Finally a drawing would take shape, to make sense, and she would regain her equilibrium. The drawing had been too large for her to scan at that stage on her equipment. She thought she had been able to at least take a photo of the drawing and that it must be somewhere in her photo archives.

Once the drawing was done one had to put watercolor to it. This was always scary. It was very easy to make a wrong move with the paint that might not be able to be repaired. Many pigments were staining and the paint was mostly transparent. The strokes easily showed as pigment set up or stained the paper. One had to make one's brushstrokes form a pattern that integrated with the design and did not interfere or attract attention to themselves over the whole image. The texture of the strokes was not the star of the image.

When she finished the painting she called friends of hers who knew the boats in that harbor. She asked them who owned that boat. They told her who the owner was.

She called the fellow and told him what she had done. She said that she wanted to offer the painting to him for sale, and that she was asking for a certain price but because she 'was hungry', that price was negotiable. Yes, now she remembered, she had taken on this project because she needed some income and wanted to see if she could earn income this way. She had realized working on it that she probably would not do this again. She did not like doing something just for the income. It just was not enough of a reason and it did not feel right. She needed to do things because she wanted to do them or because someone wanted a thing done and she wanted to do it for them. Even that was tricky. It did not seem right to do something just for the price. It did not feel right to get paid for something one did not want to do. It was not fair to the purchaser to be giving them something one was not behind oneself. Did one want surgery from a surgeon who hated performing surgery?

It was not, however, this bad for her. Mostly she hated the anticipation of getting to work on a project and the agonizing initial part where nothing seemed to be working out or making sense. It also came up when one reached a design problem and did not know how to resolve it. If one did not have coping strategies for these situations, which always seemed to come up, the going could be very rough. Alternately things could be too easy, too routing, to the point one was not learning anything, not improving anything, but simply executing a set of steps.

The boat owner was very receptive and told her his mother might be interested in buying the painting. She would soon be returning from her winter down south. He would pass on the message.

Who contacted who(m?) first she could not remember. They easily made a deal about the painting that they were both pleased with. It almost seemed as if the best part of the whole thing was that they met each other. This was when she saw that she would like to rent an apartment from these people and have them as landlords. They seemed like people who knew how to run a business while also taking care of their customers. They enjoyed their work. They were down to earth, no nonsense , and good natured.

12:58p. 1894 words