Fun With Real Paint!

Dear Readers,

Lately I got the idea that I wanted to be a painter, a serious fine-artist painter, so I moved to Paris and took up smoking. Just kidding. No, but really, I found a bunch of art supplies from this lady I found on Craigslist, and I've been tinkering around with the stuff, and look, I made this painting yesterday morning:

It's oil on canvas, 22 x 26 inches.

I also bought a gallon of cheap gesso at Hobby Lobby, which is like this primer that you're supposed to coat a canvas with before you really start painting on it, and I'm not sure that I'm applying it right. It's too thick. I've tried watering it down, but then the water and the gesso don't blend very well... hmmm... I just had an idea... maybe if I used the kitchen mixer to mix the gesso and the water, it might mix more consistently. But then again, maybe the paint would splatter everywhere. And I doubt my wife would appreciate me using the kitchen mixer on paint. And I doubt I would appreciate a chunk of gesso in her next batch of brownies. (Yes, Dr. Monica Brown, my feminist-lit professor, though I received a B in your class, which theoretically is above average, I now pass my days oppressing my weaker-vessel-in-residence by confining her to domestic toil! And most of the time she cooks barefoot! And I am not ashamed!)

I'm also having trouble adding the right amount of paint thinner and turpentine with my oil colors when I'm painting, and I still get a lot of the terminology mixed up. Like what's the difference between "mineral spirits" and "turpentine" and "paint thinner" and "medium" and "solvent?" The books I checked out from the library use those terms a lot, but I don't understand them. Now I'm wishing instead of, say, "English as a Second Language Methods and Materials in the Secondary Classroom" I had taken an oil painting class in college.

And now that I'm working at a movie-screen making factory, I kind of wish I had taken a wood shop class, a metal shop class, or a business class. Those classes have so much more real-world application than my liberal arts classes that fulfilled the "global diversity" requirement, such as "Advanced Crosswindings: Thought Journeys into Post-colonial Literary Multiplicities, 1900 - Present." I just made that class title up, but I wouldn't be surprised if it shows up in a public university's course catalog someday.

I've been watching a bunch of You-Tube videos about how to paint. And my favorite guy to watch is Bob Ross. He must be the happiest guy on the planet. Well, now that he's dead, I should say that he must be the happiest guy in the Spirit World. I love that guy.

Bob Ross makes everything look so easy! But he has all these colors that I don't have, and he also has this stuff called "liquid white" that makes everything work wonderfully, and I sort of want to go buy it, but, seeing as how my painting hobby is already grossly over budget, I might have to make do without.

So I thought of a cool way to support my painting habit. I'm going to sell my paintings! See, lately I've been looking at some of the modern/abstract paintings that people spend hundreds of dollars on, and I've been thinking, "I can do that!" So I put my first painting, the one pictured above, on Craigslist for fifty bucks. And one person responded and seemed interested, but that didn't go anywhere. So, maybe none of my paintings will sell, but I can console myself with this thought: if my artwork doesn't sell, it won't be because I'm a lazy, untrained artist; it will be because I'm misunderstood. And if I am lucky enough to be misunderstood, then I am a true artist indeed, even truer than the profiteers who peddle their paintings to all the rich ignoramuses out there who think they know what good art is.

Sincerely,
Telemoonfa

P.S. Leave comments and tell me my painting is brilliant and masterful, or else I'll cry.