Starting The New Year

Wednesday went very well. I worked from home and was focused and motivated, so I got a lot accomplished. My plan for the evening was to watch video related to a Sktchy class on cross-hatching and also to draw. It was the evening my partner plays cribbage with this family.

I decided to work on my family tree for just a little bit, first. I am trying to figure out the paternal side. That was a mistake!  I spent the whole evening doing research. I am having trouble finding balance between doing this and doing other things and I really do need to find this balance.

On the art-making side, I am planning to start drawing again and working on cross-hatching will be good. It is a skill that I need to develop.

On the painting side of things, I am thinking about working on two paintings at the same time. One would be painting on black gesso, in a manner I learned from Kat. The other would be working in layers like I tried with Carl. I never really “got it” in class. I think some interesting things might happen with working this way. It might not be accurate to attribute one of the painting styles to be from Carl. In class, he would premix colors using a palette knife. I think that might work better with "diluting" the paint color with thinned medium, but that's not what I'm doing. I am going to try and create a toned background with the colors for the different areas and see what happens.

Here is the start of the first one. Ugh. A white background is a hard place to begin.

Here is the start of the second one.

Can you tell which one I'm avoiding?