Watching out the window

Back to watercolor painting class after a relaxing Christmas break. OK. I don't know if relaxing is the word. There is so much preparation to be done for Christmas... food, gift wrapping, Christmas card design, newsletter writing, mailings... that I'm not sure there is much relaxation going on. I am grateful that Christmas comes once a year!

So, back to painting! The goal was to paint an indoor scene with a view to the outdoors. I had to base the painting on photographs. I was allowed to take liberties with the scene, which I did. So there is actually no window behind the couch. The window is elsewhere and it is huge but the view out that window is a bit boring. What I did was to take a picture of a shed behind someone else's house. I made the shed look a little bigger and closer to my mom's house. Inside, I needed to add stuff to doctor up the scene. Normally that afghan (which I called my "modern art afghan") is not on the couch. I put the afghan there. OK. So we don't actually have an orange and white cat. Zoey is black and white. But now, there is an orange and white cat and a window where no existed previously.

The painting is a combination of reality and fantasy and completely the product of my "feverish imagination." I can say "feverish imagination" because, when I was in journalism school, my news writing teacher said that I had a "feverish imagination." As it turns out, he was right...