A couple of Morisots, why not

I spent more years than I care to remember with the kind of crippling writer's block that is so common to academics and aspiring culture writers. Oddly, it's been years now since I've had that feeling, though I write and present at a similar volume, just for mostly private audiences. 

The thing about art, I've found, is that even when I'm just copying someone else's work, I seem to be able to get into a mentality--"well, this is probably not going to go as well as I want it to, but I'll do it anyway"--that I could never manage before. Is this what getting older is like?

In which we attempt to be Van Gogh

A funny thing I've learned while painting: if you're looking at a painting for color and order of composition--as opposed to form or iconography, like they teach you in art history--you notice that there are fiddly little problems that recur across artists and have sometimes funny solutions. "How does Van Gogh leave no gaps between the objects in his painting?" was last week's question, the answer to which was "he goes in at the end and outlines everything on the horizon in a slightly lighter blue than the rest of the sky, same as you wanted to do but thought was too amateurish." (thinking a solution is amateurish is probably a pretty good sign of being at the beginning of learning something)

Today's: "how do you accurately represent the horizon where foreground and sky meet?" Answer: "You don't. Tiny-ish little things on the horizon will take care of that for you."