Laughter Is the Best Medicine

This painting session served as a valuable reminder about the importance of surrounding myself with good friends.

I’ll start from the beginning. My friend and I decided to complete our first plein air painting session together after a really long day. We were tired and didn’t “feel” like being creative; however, we knew that we weren’t going to have another opportunity to paint later that week, so we decided to complete it that very day. We packed the car with our equipment and drove to the site where we would spend the next three hours.

The ride was quiet after a busy day, and I felt the energy gradually leave my body as I looked out the car window. However, the mood quickly shifted after we witnessed a car speed through a light, drive over a bump, and literally catch air at an intersection. Luckily, nothing more than that happened, but the randomness of that unearthly display was enough to make my friend and I burst out laughing. Suddenly, I felt a little less tired.

We eventually made it to an overlook at the lake and scoped out a good spot to begin setting up. I had the high expectations that this painting session would be poetic and that I’d feel like “a real artist.” Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case. Instead, my easel collapsed several times and broke, the wind kept blowing my hair into my face, I somehow inhaled several bugs, and I dropped my palette knife into goose poop.

One inconvenient thing after another kept happening, and I began to feel the frustration building in my chest. Luckily, my friend was there to make me feel better about the whole situation, and I eventually calmed down; unfortunately, the roles reversed, and she began to crash out as well.

Several other challenging moments happened throughout the session, but I’m glad we had each other in the midst of our frustration. Overall, it was a tough day, but it was also one of my favorite days, oddly enough.

You might ask, “Why? You just wrote about all the small things that kept going wrong, and you sounded frustrated.”

Yes, this is true. However, I couldn’t seem to stop laughing with my friend despite the repetitive disappointment. For that reason alone, it was one of my all-time favorite days that I’ve experienced regardless of the aspects that didn’t go according to plan. In hindsight, I’ve come to the realization that it’s important to surround myself with people who can shift an “unfortunate circumstance” into a “more tolerable circumstance.” It’s much easier to do this when you’re laughing with friends, and suddenly… things don’t seem so bad.

In the grand scheme of life, my “rough” experience while painting… really, isn’t that deep. However, I believe the principle of surrounding yourself with a “good crowd” remains true.

The Process

My goal for this session was to emphasize certain qualities about the setting, such as color and light, that stood out to me the most. To accomplish this, I covered the entirety of the canvas with a muted shade of green. Next, I sketched out the general layout of the setting with a thin layer of paint. From here, I painted the shimmering areas of sunlight reflected on the surface of the water and painted the overall shapes/values of the land; however, I was unsatisfied with the product of my work as every brushstroke felt too… ridged and stiff.

I thought an abstract element could potentially fix this issue, so I decided to take a large flat brush and swipe it across the surface of the canvas to create soft colorful streaks. Overall, I am pleased with the result.

Medium: Oil on Cotton Canvas

Duration: 3 hours