Skip to main content

Petals and Wings

My short hiatus from painting was very unproductive. I took a vacation from work, and decided to do nothing. I had a pretty good time doing next to nothing - at least for a day. I get restless when I'm not making things.

Today's painting is not one of my favorites. I found these interesting leaves in a parking lot somewhere last month (the moth wings were found a day later). I've been wanting to paint the leaves for a while, but I kept putting it off. The painting is a bit sloppy for my taste - I used the wrong brush for the washes, too much water in some places, too little in others, inadvertently lifted color out of some edges, everything looks kind of flat...but it feels so good to be back! I had no idea what I was doing, and I tried all kinds of random things to get the effects I was after.

This piece isn't going in a gallery. It is a stepping stone. It is a learning experience.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ice Skating Characters

 
Post a Comment
Read more

Back at the foot...

Life happened. I have always enjoyed that expression - it's great shorthand for "a lot of things in my life  transpired to keep me from doing what I love". Even better, that phrase takes the blame off of me for not keeping up with the painting, drawing, blogging and thinking. I can't say that I haven't been extremely busy, I just know that I really didn't have to stop being an artist during the busy period. I moved to a new place. I'm typing this from a completely different office. My paints and paper are rearranged. I'm removing the dry paint from my palette. I am back where I started - only now, I haven't set any sort of rules for myself to keep me on track. A good friend asked me the other day, "So, what is your dream job anyway? If you could make money doing what you love, what would that look like?" I didn't know exactly how to respond. I love art and design - but that is so vague and broad. What do I like to design? What kin...
Post a Comment
Read more

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.
Post a Comment
Read more