Skip to main content

Away and Back

A hummingbird from one of my favorite research materials: over-sized books of animals. I have collected a lot of books for the purpose of drawing and painting. Over the years, I have also collected a great number of sketchbooks, pads of paper, paintbrushes, and paint. Sitting down and making use of all these materials feels...right.

I have been spending a lot of time thinking about the way I work and about the space in which I work. All this week, I have been getting up when my alarm goes off the first time without hitting the snooze button three or four times - that time has gone toward some simple sketches and reading. It is still tough to break my procrastination habit; but I am beginning to identify the things that make it so persistent in the first place.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Drawloween (at my own pace) - Pumpkins

 

Inktober Day 3 - "Bait"

Old school pen and ink. I haven't used a crow quill pen since high school - and, even then, I remember struggling to get it to work. This time, I thought I would try to create something using only cross-hatching. The prompt word today is "bait". This word took me into a lot of different ideas, but the one I ultimately landed on is based on the will-o-wisp. In my head, I imagined glowing orbs in front of a copse of swamp trees all created with layers of cross-hatching. Things had to be scaled back a bit. There are still two trees in the background if you look hard enough. Success? Sort of. It forced me to use a different kind of pen and, in doing so, made me want to keep going and get better with it.

Rules and requirements (mostly for me)

Initially, I was taking a look at my scanner for the maximum dimensions of a painting. I realize now that archiving paintings is a bit more involved than posting 300x300 pixel GIFs. So, some of these pieces will need to be photographed. Others will be scanned (provided the paper doesn't curl too badly). Here is the rough draft of my proposed project: I will create 2-3 finished watercolor pieces every week for the year 2014 The minimum dimensions for each piece will be 4x6" (no maximum) Materials list: Watercolor paint (in tubes or cakes), watercolor pencils, brushes, India Ink, bamboo pen, white gouache, and gold paint pen. Subject matter will change with every painting. I know there is a lot a person can learn from painting the same subject over and over, but this is not that project. New paintings will be posted on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Expect extra posts to occur between those days. Since the whole purpose of this project is to learn, I plan on reading and resear