Completed Painting at last!

Completed watercolor portrait

"Woman in the Slums of Kibera"

Finally! I have completed the watercolor portrait that I began in the class I took with artist Mitchell Tolle last summer (July 2017) in Berea, Kentucky. It was a five day workshop, the third in which I have been privileged to participate. It was a grueling week for me! One afternoon I was so frustrated, I felt like leaving and not going back! But I had to stick it out, and by the end of that same day I had made progress and felt much better about the whole process. Another character flaw coming out in myself LOL. One of the notes I wrote in class says, "Don't leave a painting when there is a problem; ask, 'what is the problem?' If it has a problem, fix it, or figure out how to fix it, then FIX IT. Frustration means you are afraid of failure. Solve the problem, or admit that you cannot,  and throw it out. Develop the discipline to never put away a painting until you are finished."

Here is the painting as it was when the workshop week had ended.

You can tell I needed to add more color to several areas.

Mr. Tolle had gone on a mission trip to Nairobi, Kenya, to this place called The Slums of Kibera. He snapped a photograph of a woman who was with so many others receiving bags of maize being passed out to people living in this slum. All of us in the workshop painted this same woman; I wonder what she would think if she knew she had been the study of a concentrated group of painters!

The Kibera is within the city of Nairobi in Kenya.There are approx 1.2 million slum dwellers in the Kibera in an area of 2.5 square kilometres. 75%  of the population of Kibera are under the age of 18 and 100,000 children living here are orphaned. It is the biggest slum in Africa and the slum environment is degrading and dehumanising, characterised by abject poverty, corruption, periodic violence and contagious diseases due to environmental pollution. The majority of the slum dwellers are reduced to begging due to lack of employment and opportunities to earn a living for individual wellbeing or provision of their families. (from http://www.lunchbowl.org/the-kibera.html )

I am trying to follow the advice I wrote down in class- I do have one more painting that has been "on the shelf" for five years(!!) probably. My son and husband keep prodding me to finish it, so when I do get it completed, I can feel relieved to start on some new work that I have been planning to do before the fall arrives this year! 

One last note: I was struggling so much on this piece because of the many layers of color that I laid down. Seems like I needed a brush that would not lift the color when I attempted to apply more. On the recommendation of Mr. Tolle and my friend Morgan, I bought a new, very expensive brush to do the completion work on the face. I mean expensive like $40.00 for one little brush. But it seems to have solved the problem for me! This is one tool I am going to be super careful to protect!