Keeping It Simple

In order to have time to paint, I want to keep it simple.  Right now, the most important thing is to pick up a paint brush on way more days than not.  At the same time, I also want to develop better habits for when I paint.

One new thing is that I've started warming up, by practicing getting different shapes in 1-2 strokes as suggested in one of Patti Mollica's books.  I'm also doing a quick thumbnail value drawing. 

Oof!  There's a lot to getting back in the saddle including, values, color-mixing, brush strokes, not to mention managing the paint on your brush, trying to capture the actual thing you are painting, and breaking in a fresh palette. 

I tend to have a habit of getting the paint too far up into the brush.  So today, I focused on managing the paint on the brush.  

Co-op Citrus #3

Begin Again

One of the many good concepts I’ve picked up from my meditation practice is the concept of “begin again”. Yesterday, I began again.

I set up a fresh palette and did a quick, simple painting.  In the moment, it didn’t feel especially good.  It felt awkward and all of my bad habits are back.  After I was off doing other things last night and into today, when I am aware of any passing thoughts about yesterday’s painting, I feel a little whisper of happiness.  

Today, I came downstairs to gesso enough pages in one of my spiral notebooks to be able to start painting again.  I am going to shoot for getting paint on a brush on a daily basis. 

Here’s my fresh palette, used one time so far. 

Happy Holidays!

 Happy holidays from Hammett and me.  

A few days ago, a dumped out a tub of my hats, gloves, and scarves on the bench in the kitchen.  Hammett immediately jumped on the pile and went to sleep. Later, I decided it was time for Hammett to hone his hat-modeling skills. I've continued to torture him in this way for the past few days.    

I've been gone from this blog for awhile and I also have not been drawing or painting.  I'm getting back to a place where I think I'll be starting up all of it again, shortly.  

Self Portrait

Back in January 2021, I started a self portrait project and I made a specific pamphlet for it. The goal is to draw one portrait per month and I’ve been trying to do that within the 1st week of the month to prevent procrastination. I’m a little late this month. It will take me 2 years to fill the pamphlet. 

At the beginning of the year, I was focusing more on faces and portraits, so one reason for this project was to see what changed over time from a drawing perspective. Although, currently, I have not been drawing faces. 

The other reason for this project is getting to know my own face in a different way. Most of the time, I’m on auto-pilot with respect to my face. When I look in the mirror there it is, but it’s changing, as I get older and my relationship to it also keeps changing. 

The thing I keep coming back to is that there’s been something deep and profound about having pictures of several people that I am biologically related to and it’s changed how I relate to my own face.

Postcard for Wet Paint

Wet Paint has a summer postcard project each year and also has a event at the end. One of the requirements is that you have to mail the postcard to them. It’s no fair dropping it off. 

I’ve been meaning to work on a piece for it and finally did today. 

Have I mentioned lately how much I love the Neocolor II crayons. When I was doing cat in hat portraits, I was mostly using them as crayons. Lately, I’ve been playing with them as though they were watercolors. 

Last Year’s Hummingbird

 I got together with a friend today and played around with my Neocolor IIs. The first thing I worked on was a very long warm up. Next, I started working on a hummingbird drawing from a picture I took last year. Since the hubby is off playing cribbage with this family this evening, I finished it up this evening.  

In this one, I used the Neos more as though they were watercolor. I’m not sure what to do with the background, so I’m leaving it as is.

I Was Gone And Now I’m Back

When I say I was gone, I mean that I was gone from my daily art practice. It’s hard to come back once I’ve lost the daily habit. The project approach has been a good one, but I think I need to define what it means to me so I can make it sustainable again.

I’ve been playing with gouache a bit, along with slowly working my way through Shari Blaukopf’s class about sketching skies in gouache. I both want to work through this class and play with gouache and also find myself avoiding it all at the same time.

While this makes me feel as though I’m flitting around too much and probably should decide on one thing to focus on, I also just gone done (about 5 minutes ago) taking with a short class from Wet Paint. It was about using the Caran D’Ache Neocolor II crayons. Up until now, I’ve just been using them as crayons. In this short, but very fun class we added water. In one excercise, we used them almost like watercolor and in the other exercise we used them more opaquely, but activated with some water. It was super fun.

I went too complicated for the subject matter for the first exercise. For the opaque one, I went with a simple apple.