As I noted in last week’s post, I’ve been utterly fascinated with just about all things culinary since I was a child. In 2007, feeling a little down and out, I was wandering through Michaels (an arts & crafts store) and spotted a sign advertising cake decorating classes for half-price, $20! Great! I thought, I’ve always wanted to learn how to decorate cakes. My birthday’s coming up so I’m going to buy myself a birthday present of a cake-decorating class. And so I did. After that first cake-decorating class, I was hooked, so I enrolled in the next three classes. In the years following, I took a couple of pastry classes at ARC. In between, I practiced/played at home a little.
Over the years, I’ve watched various culinary TV shows and joined a plethora of hobby baker groups on Facebook. What I’ve also figured out is that Sacramento is quite lacking in any serious instruction on culinary artistry so I realized I needed to take a roundabout way of learning some basic instruction. So, instead of taking blown sugar classes, I took glass-blowing. Instead of figure-making with fondant and modeling chocolate, I would take ceramics. Can’t find a class on airbrushing and painting on cakes? Well, then, take a class in painting!
I’ve never been one to have an interest in creating visual art of my own (well, other than photography – not something that involved my hands creating something noteworthy and/or meaningful from nothing). Even in boredom, I’d try doodling like I’d see others do on TV, and doodling was even more boring so I’d stop. I’m still not one to draw, which is good because I’m pretty bad at it. Anyway, in the interest of being able to create pretty two-dimensional pictures on cakes, I decided to take a painting class at CRC in Fall 2014. I started out signing up for one of those popular-in-the-moment paint-and-wine classes, but they looked like a bunch of individuals drinking and doing something akin to paint-by-numbers, which isn’t what I was seeking. A semester painting class for me then.
I learned pretty quickly that I definitely do not have any artistic talent in this respect. I walked into class to find a simple set-up of a cube and ball in gray colors and was tasked with representing them on art paper in black and white. Wow, did I suck! It was pretty amazing to discover how really bad I am in painting. We moved on to black, white and gray. We then started using actual canvases and mixing colors. As the class progressed, I could see the amazing work of my classmates around me. A few – very few – were abysmal like mine. Most of the work, though, was rather good; some of it was quite impressive. While I did learn, when we introduced ourselves, that a majority of my classmates had had art classes before when in high school (and pretty recently since most of them seemed barely out of high school), I still didn’t expect our skill levels to be so far apart. It also didn’t help when the instruction I would receive from my teacher would be, “You’re not doing this correctly.” Okay, great. How about some words telling me what I need to do to be doing the technique correctly? Yeah, it really didn’t happen.
I was also a pretty timid painter. Early on, we were told to obtain charcoal to lightly sketch on our canvases in order to plan out our paintings first. Even sketching with the charcoal and applying the first paint made me anxious. What if I did it wrong? I’d be pretty committed at that point. Our instructor would tell us not to worry about it as we could always paint over that part and do it over. The only thing is you really needed to wait for that item to dry sufficiently in order to paint over it and not have the new paint end up mixing with the old paint vs. painting over the previously-applied paint.
And still, I pushed on. I was determined to finish this class and not resign myself to thinking I’d never figure out painting. And, really, it did turn out to be fun and somewhat soothing, especially when I’d work on my paintings at home. My husband is normally a very tolerant man, but he was especially tolerant to be willing to walk into our home day after day and be greeted with the smell of fresh acrylic paint – even more so when I’d be painting in the middle of our living room (hey, that’s where the TV was; I needed some visual entertainment while I tackled my painting assignments).
All of my paintings still turned out pretty bad. I don’t think I ever earned higher than a B on any of them. I did walk away with something better, though; I walked away with a previously-undiscovered love of painting. Unfortunately, I discovered midway through the semester that drawing skills were assumed (I’d never had a drawing class). It wasn’t a prerequisite so I didn’t take a drawing class before painting, and it really showed in my painting (my instructor would comment on my perspective being all strange in my paintings).
The following semester, I enrolled in a beginning drawing class. Can’t be harder than painting, right? Wrong. I actually found it to be worse. The first few weeks were great because we used tools that helped us, like T-squares and rulers, and we would draw straight lines and sketch ellipses using lots of straight lines as guides. However, then we got into real drawing where we were supposed to, with a light touch, freehand sketch what we were seeing. I found I’m even worse with that than painting. What’s more, I really wasn’t enjoying drawing class (a 4.5- to 5-hour once-a-week painting class was much easier to sit through than a 4.5- to 5-hour once-a-week drawing class). It got worse as I found my ongoing health issues interfered more and more with my ability to function fully in class – like standing at an easel (I told my instructor I’d have to sit due to back problems), carrying in my supplies back-and-forth (even though I used a cart, it was still a bit of a strain – it was bad with painting class the previous semester but had gotten worse a few months later during the drawing class semester).
I never did get to see how I would progress in drawing class. My instructor and I agreed that my health issues were detracting from my ability to progress (since I could only handle the pain for so long), and I dropped the class. I’m still interested in learning to draw, but it’ll have to wait for when I’m physically ready to tackle it again. Actually, I think I’d rather just teach myself via books and YouTube videos. I’m not all that invested in spending hours in a studio drawing on an easel. I just want to know enough to be able to paint properly.
Meanwhile, painting on cakes? After all this, I discovered that the painting skills I need to learn are in watercolor painting. It never occurred to me to check on this beforehand, especially after the investment I made in canvases, brushes, an easel and paint. Lots and lots of paint. Painting is a rather expensive endeavor. We had a choice of doing acrylic or oil, and I decided on acrylic paint since acrylic paints dry faster and are less expensive. Goodness! They’re still hellishly expensive, and you can go through tubes of paint rather quickly. It’s rather a blessing that I had no interest in doing this in my younger years as I never would’ve been able to afford it. Would I take painting class again? Yeah, I would – in a minute. When you have time to just focus on your painting in front of you (and, really, no choice to do anything but that), there is a certain peace that develops. Yeah, with no other factors in mind, I would love to take painting again.
Next week – Part XI: Nothing but the 1s and 0s.
LNR
Moments in Our Lives 