Painting Like Monet: A How-To

Step 1: Go to your painting class at Joslyn. Get there early this time, and wander into the gift shop. Purchase the little postcard box set deal -- 20 postcards for $13. Remember that you are studying Claude Monet tonight, so choose "The Meadow" as one of your postcards.

Step 2: Meet up with your class and stroll through the museum until you find the Impressionists. Listen as your teacher explains the movement. Get up close and personal on all of the paintings with a magnifying glass. Be tempted to touch them but don't.

Step 3: Find the real "The Meadow" and marvel at all of those tiny brushstrokes:

Step 4: Also admire "Small Country Farm at Bordighera" by Monet. Be told by your teacher that the class is going to copy this painting for tonight's project:

Step 5: Go downstairs to your classroom. Listen to a lesson about the color wheel and its importance in paintings. Stare at the copy of the small country farm and realize that you don't like it -- in fact, you kind of hate it. Decide it must be the palm trees, as you really, really don't like palm trees. Also be put off by the pastel colors. Know deep in your soul that pastels bother you for some reason. Be less put off by the pastels in the first painting:

Step 6: Decide to copy "The Meadow" instead. Pull out your camera and study the photos you took of it since you don't have a print-out. Feel embarrassed as you beep loudly through the pictures numerous times while your teacher is talking. Realize that everyone else in the class is working on the palm tree painting. Decide you don't care. You're not hanging a palm tree painting in your home. So begin with the sky -- blues and whites:

Step 7: Keep scrolling through your photos for reference until the camera battery alert starts flashing. Curse at yourself because you KNEW the battery would run out and you SHOULD have charged it BEFORE you went to class. Get all annoyed. Give in and realize you won't be able to take "progress" photos of the Monet. Struggle to remember what the real painting looks like.

Step 8: Suddenly remember that you have a postcard of the painting in your bag. DUH. Whip out the tiny image and do your best to copy the style. Realize that you're failing miserably at matching the scale and are not doing so well with this whole "mixing any color in the world from the primaries" experiment. Your colors look nothing like Monet's colors. Decide it totally doesn't matter.

Step 9: Remember that you want to put Something Blondie into the painting. Decide that this week, Little and Auntie Bon Bon will replace the children in the field -- as garden fairies. Smudge in two redheaded fairies with wings standing in the lower left of the painting:

Step 10: Say goodbye to your classmates, and drive back home with your little painting on the seat next to you. Feel very relaxed and happy you are in the painting class. Wake up in the morning and realize that even though it just looks like a bunch of blobs when you're super close up, it kind of does look like a field with trees, mountains, and a couple of garden fairies if you stand far enough away:

Step 11: As you write out the how-to on your blog, realize that all of your posts lately have been about painting or cross stitching or your back. Realize you might need to mix things up. But then recognize that you really are enjoying sharing your painting class with your bloggie readers. And know that soon, without any doubt, Something Stupid will happen and you'll be able to change topics.