I, too, had a plant experience many years ago when I tried my hands at Reiki. Coming home from my Reiki workshop in the evening, I felt a sadness in a plant reminding me of the tearful eyes of my son’s girl friend when he broke up with her. I succeeded in dissipating that sadness. For the following years, the plant has not ‘talked’ to me again about sadness. It now shields my living room from the curiosity of passersby.

Sitting here in my dining room, typing, I realize that my daughter’s Yucca tree, grown tall again after one of its repeating trimmings, forms a green curtain shielding me in here. The other window serves as light source for a bunch of wild growing Aloe veras. During the winter months, my geraniums shield my kitchen window, fun to see the red blossoms from the outside snowy street. I am living here in Michigan ‘Dutch’ style without curtains on the downstairs windows.

I could not find your flower on your website.

Do you mean to say that the flower that you drew did not wilt only the ones that you did not draw?

It sounds like an excellent exercise to learn to capture significant features in a short time.

When I first started with art in high school, it took me weeks to finish just one piece. In college, my professor taught us how to draw faster. We practiced a little at a time, at first we were given 20 minutes to draw as much detail about a model as possible, then 15 minutes, 10 minutes, 5 minutes, 2 minutes, 1 minutes, and then moved into seconds, decreasing by 10 until we got to 10 seconds! Obviously, we couldn’t produce masterpieces in mere seconds, but the exercises taught us about sketching and fleshing out, using as much detail as we could without being extremely tedious.

I thought the exercises were pointless, but they actually helped me. People are surprised to learn that most of my drawings can be done in around 1 hour. If you visit my website, the completed works take from 1-2 hours, and the sketches range from 5-20 minutes.

And, most of the old masters did not have the technology of photography to help them, so they either had their subjects come in for days to pose, or they did rough sketches or paintings to use as reference. Mary Cassatt, in fact, would do rough paintings which she would “clean up” to create her pieces. I actually like her rough paintings even more than her others, because they seem to have more life and feeling.

And again, to clarify, I don’t think that either method is truly superior, I just prefer from-life drawings myself.

I don’t make judgement calls for or against those who paint from photos, but for me what I lose is to great compared to the conveinence.

for me painting is choosing and selecting what I deem beautiful from the turmoil that surrounds me. whether it is the light changing, or the effects of the weather or the effect the surrounding colors have on each other the color is my subject, so photos are lacking in that respect and for me the paintings from them lack that variety too.