You might have noticed that there is a new widget in the right hand column a couple of scrolls down titled 'NaBloPoMo/February 2012/Relative.' Wonder what that is? When I noticed this strange looking word, NaBloPoMo, on BlogHer last year I wondered what it was. Stands for National Blog Posting Month [which I guess is in November] - it's an event thing where writers post to their blog daily...every day in the month. BlogHer decided to do a NaBloPoMo challenge every month and this month, February, I decided to join in.
Wow. A post a day for 29 Leap Year days. Can I do it? We shall see. The theme for this month is 'relative.' Bloggers can use it to inspire their writing or not, but I decided to go with it for today.
I got to thinking about relatives and family, then art. Then I did some mental wandering through my memory banks [I'm watching/listening through the 4 seasons of 'Enterprise' while I work this week] and asked "when did I begin to drift towards art?" When I was a kid, my goal in life - now don't laugh - was to be an FBI agent. Could be why I like the X-Files and Fringe so much. However I think it was while spending time in my grandmother's gardens where I began to absorb color.
My paternal grandmother had not just a green thumb, she was a walking, talking green person. Grandma could grow anything. She had prize winning roses and begonias. She had been the president of her community's garden club for many years. She shared with me her love of flowers and garden design. I didn't have a camera back in those days, but I would draw flowers. When I got older is when I started to really pay attention to the fact that Grandpa was a painter! He worked in oils and painted seascapes and California missions...among other themes. I used to sit as he painted and he'd describe his techniques.
I took my first art classes in high school and then many art classes in college. I learned more about color when I took a semester which only allowed us to work in black, white and shades of gray - the value scale. Another semester was spent in an arboretum painstakingly drawing the plants there. The weirdest and most fun was a course in 3-dimensional design. And, of course, I loved all the art history courses. Yes, I learned much in college. But it was in Grandma's gardens where I began to appreciate the relationships between color and form.
I've written before that my grandfather was a representational, realistic painter for the most part. And, even though I learned to draw that way, I have always leaned to the abstract. If I paint a barn, I'd rather pay attention to the colors and shape of it than the fact it's a barn. On a trip to admire Fall foliage a couple years ago, I photographed a barn. Then I took the picture into my Photoshop program and "painted" the building bright red! Now that's a barn!
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