Sunday, 23-Feb-20 21:13:53 CET

Suzana 23 February 2020

It is now Saturday afternoon, and I started early on writing the blog post of the live model painting session tomorrow. Today we went to our future plot again. The dirt road is finished. It was the first time ever that we drove on the road and my wife filmed the journey.

I had my boots in the trunk, so I took a walk on the plot. It was windy and rainy. I suppose this weather is the storm, Ellen, on the way in, but I am not sure about that. At the side of the road, there are some large chunks of clay. I could walk easily on the ground. It is wet but not soggy. I see holes in the ground that I suppose are made by mice. Below the corner pole of the neighbor’s plot, there was a drool lying of a larger bird.

Where the digger machines have been driving beside the new road, the ground is soggy. They did that because they first dug out the ground 60 cm deep and placed the construction fabric at the bottom. After applying the construction fabric, they spread out a thin layer of sand on the fabric so that it would not blow away. The tracks next to the road are from the distribution of that sand. You would think that they could have used the road to build the road, but that was not possible. They could not drive with heavy machines on the bare construction fabric, they had to drive next to the road. Now I got these tracks on my plot. That is how it is.

I could see other tracks as well had been driving straight over my future plot. I have no idea what that is. It surely was no need for the road builders to do that.

When I came back to the car, my boots had a thick layer of clay around them. I placed the boots back in the trunk, ready for the next visit to the future plot.

Then we went to the second-hand shop. At the bookshelf, I found a book by Rosemary Verey. I read the introduction to the book. She talked about how she started gardening and that she kept a diary of her garden. It was a really nice story. I decided not to buy the book, though, but I was feeling inspired by Rosemary and the diary of her garden. I think the book was translated from English to Dutch.

In a few weeks, I will have a garden as well. I already have a little tiny garden, but now it is going to be a much larger garden. There will be much to learn.

For my paintings, I feel that the blog has been beneficial. I think that blogging about the garden and the development in it will also be good for both me and the garden.

Now it is Sunday morning 23 of February 2020, and I am on my way to the live painting session in Amsterdam. It is windy today. Yesterday evening I worked on the slideshow program together with my son. It was great to do something together with him. He appreciated it too. This morning I blogged about our work on the slideshow. I blogged soo long that I almost got late going to the live painting session in Amsterdam. Well, I am sitting on my favorite train. Lucky for me, it takes some time to unload a train. The train from Zwolle arrives in Almere, and they go to the other side of the platform and board the train to Amsterdam. If I arrive before them, then I get a good spot, but if I arrive later, all good spots are taken.

Last week I painted Helen. I have no idea who will be the model this week. I uploaded the image of my painting to Instagram, and I got some likes. I also got a commend from a long time follower Kuankiwai. He said that he was also missing blue and cyan colors in my painting. With his comment, I realized that something went wrong with my painting. The real painting had a green background. In my photo, it had become black. I figured out I had done the color correction wrong, and I said that to Kunkiwai. He replied that he never edits his photos of his paintings. That is nice for him that he got a photo studio with well-balanced daylight, but I don’t have that. What I am doing is that I make a photo of my paintings with a white paper, and then I color correct against that paper.

The color correction is foolproof. So I thought. Later I realized that I had made a selection of my painting, and then I color corrected with the part of the photo of the white paper, but that paper was outside my selection. Later I took a new photo of my painting from last week, and this time I color corrected correctly. I will post that photo here.

A little girl in a seat next to me just said that when she is bigger, she will be allowed to decide where she is going. Go, girl! I thought she was together with her grandmom, but the girl called her mommy. That makes her granddad her dad, I suppose.

I had to wait for tram 13 longer than usual. The municipality is reworking the water in front of the station. I recall there were more trees. Now I can only find one tree in front of the station.

The artists today were Irene, Ron, Saskia, and me. The model was Suzana from Brasil. There is another model with a similar name, but she is from Germany. This was the first time that Suzana was modeling for us, and Saskia wanted Suzana to wear a dress. There were a couple of choices. Since there was a cyan-green plaid where she was going to sit, I thought a contrasting color for the dress would be better. Like red, for example. Saskia did not want that first but changed her mind. It looks like the warm light is abandoned completely. It was warm in two ways, it was warm in the light, but it produced much heat as well. Now we only have a large white lamp for the model. There is an incandescent light bulb in it.

I took place away from the lamp this time. Suzana came to sit elegantly, and because of this, I decided to paint all of her. Perhaps I do the next painting zoomed-in half body, and the final painting can be a full-on portrait. We will see how it goes.

Here is the painting of Suzana. This time I color corrected the image correctly. That feeling of Kuantiwai’s comment is still nagging me. This is my art, and it is my art all the way I present it. If I decide to post-edit the paintings in a way they don’t look anything like the painting, then that would also be my art. As long as I am doing it, it is my art. When someone else is doing it, then it is fake. That said, the edits I aim to do is to present the painting correctly.