Embarassed, but Free

As I flipped through one of the new magazines on the shelf this morning, I was struck by some of the art inside. What I saw was art without rules or limits - art without a concept of preciousness or perfection. The artists used what they had to create what they wanted.

It's completely the opposite of the way I normally work - I didn't do any measuring or think about the real relationships between elements. I placed wild watercolor crayon marks and quickly constructed a face around them. It's weird. It's lopsided. The eyes are too close together and misshapen. It's perfect.

The product may not be something I feel confident showing off, but I feel like I tapped into something important while I was creating it. I felt unbalanced and challenged without feeling hopeless and lost. I felt happy just to be there: doing the work.

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Drawloween (at my own pace) - Pumpkins

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

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.

Rainbow Bisque

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