Marla Bagetta's art lessons - short-lived, big impact

Last month, I posted that I'd signed up for Marla Bagetta's monthly online art classes. Well, that lasted all of one month. I've since pulled out of them. 

But before you jump to conclusions, I want to clarify that it's NOT because her classes are bad. In fact, Marla is an excellent art teacher. She explains what she does, and she puts in a lot of effort in her lessons. Her tutorials are easy to follow - here's one I did on a vase of flowers:

As part of her lesson plans, Marla does mini lessons which focus on specific topics. These are short and less daunting to someone just starting out or wishes to hone a particular skill. This is a bowl I did following her lesson, and I have to say I would never have been able to achieve the luminosity if left on my own.

Apart from still life, I also tried to paint a few landscape pieces following her techniques. This is of El Retiro Park in Madrid, using my own reference photo.

This is one following Marla's reference photo in a paint-along tutorial:

And here's one from her tutorial on nightscapes, that I did using my own photo of Marina Bay Sands.

From her landscape tutorials, I learned how to draw sky holes convincingly, how to paint sky, shadows and light, and how to paint foliage without it looking like a messy mass of green.

So I know you're wondering: if her lessons are so good, why did I stop? Well, after following quite a few of her full-length and mini lessons, I came to this realisation: I am not a landscape painter at heart.

I guess I've always suspected this, but I didn't want to be shaped by bias. I thought maybe it's because I'm better at drawing animals that I THINK I don't like landscapes, so perhaps if I improved my skills in this area, I would enjoy it more. I wanted to give landscapes a real chance.

Well, after a month's experiment, I now know that my intuition was right. It's not that I don't enjoy landscapes. When I'm painting one with no expectations on the outcome, it can be quite fun. But it's a very fleeting, superficial kind of fun - the kind that you get from reading a funny story or having a nice chat with a friend. It's not the same inner fulfilment I get from painting animals.  

It's hard to explain. I will never claim to be able to draw the most realistic animals - that's not my aim anyway. When I paint animals, I feel the innate urge to breathe life into the animal's soul, to express the animal's personality through its eyes and movement. And in the occasional moments that I feel I've achieved that, it's magic. 

I don't feel that with landscapes, not even close. And the results show - even though I've made improvement, you can see they're hardly exciting pieces of artwork. I find that I need to feel inspired to do a landscape piece and even then, I need to complete it quickly or I'll lose interest.

Much as I hate labels and don't want to be known as an "animal artist", this is the area I feel most drawn to, at least for now. 

Did Marla's lessons go to waste then? Of course not! She taught me so much more in a month than I did, fumbling with pastels on my own in the last six. I'm a firm believer that you should never pigeon-hole yourself and do only that one thing. We can learn so much from different art mediums and subjects. The skills are often more transferable and applicable than we think. The nature landscapes in my animal drawings have improved significantly, thanks to the landscape tips I picked up from the lessons. So has my mark making. 

It's quite ironic that my biggest takeaway from Marla's lessons is that drawing animals is my thing. But it's the outcome of a process of self-reflection that I don't take for granted. So for that, thank you Marla.