Christmas wish list for my art journey…

We all have our wish lists for Christmas including me. My one true wish is to receive a million dollars but we all know the chances of that happening, so here is a more realistic wish list in order of importance:

 

1. Life Book 2018 Basic package,

2. Paint Your Heart and Soul 2018,

3. Let’s Face It 2018

 

All of these have early bird pricing, a couple only until December 1st, and 4th and the other until the 31st. I wish I could get all of them at their discounted prices but alas my current financial situation won’t permit it. Hopefully, I’ll be able to save over the next few months and buy them as my finances allow, at some point, in 2018 before they are no longer available. I have been learning so much from Life Book 2017 this year and Book of Days 2017. I would have loved to have continued Book of Days 2018 but I had to cut costs somewhere.

 

I’m grateful for the job I have which allows me to pay my bills, unfortunately it doesn’t allow for much else so my art journey as far as buying art courses goes has come to a screeching halt. It doesn’t mean I’ll stop creating. It means I’ll have to find free sources to bring art education to my life.

I have been lucky to be part of the art courses I have this year, actually winning a seat in Ever After 2017 was wonderful. I am just sad to learn these and other courses I cherish which continue next year may not be part of my art education resources.

On to more exciting things. I continued watching the Project Pack #1 videos and practicing some of the tangles and techniques in shading. Here are my results. I love the star pattern on November 14th! This one just came out gorgeous.

I learned a lot on the next pattern on how to create a 3D effect and how a simple black line can make such a huge difference was a wonderful surprise.

I have drawn paradox quite a few times. This was my first time on black paper with white pen so I played around with two designs, shading them in different ways. I am thrilled with them both and hope to use the shading technique on other projects.

I have included this one again because I made some additions to it.

Adding the little sprigs that look like evergreen just set this pattern off. Adding an element so different from the other elements makes them stand out more. At this time I think I’m done with this page. I’ve moved on to working on another page to see if I can change this up a bit. It may make an appearance in my next blog post but I won’t promise anything. I have other pressing matters I need to attend to which I hope I have planned sufficiently to get them underway.

 

Long week and #Inktober2017

It has been a long week of working seven days with one of those days being an eight hour shift on our Thanksgiving Holiday here in Canada. I don’t mind. It is a joy to interact with people, learn their plans for the holiday and helping them to find what they need to provide their holiday meal for their family.

I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to keep up with my Inktober sketches for those seven days. My work is very physical which means I end up very tired especially after an eight hour shift. It turned out easier than I thought it would. I believe this was due to my forethought of making each sketch conform to a small area on the page.

These are page 1 and page 2 of my #Inktober2017 sketches. The pages are 7″ x 10″ which includes the area where the pages are bound. Each square is approximately 2 1/2″ x 2 3/4″, therefore each sketch is relatively small.  Some of them took only 15 minutes or so to sketch while others took a bit longer.

page 1

One of the reasons I decided to attempt the #Inktober challenge this year was the fact that I could do them while sitting on my sofa, resting while watching videos. This was important because my hours for when I work fluctuate. I don’t go into work at the same time every day. Some days I go in as early as 7am, while other days I might go to work at 2 or 3 in the afternoon or other days as late as 6 or 7pm. Therefore, it was important for me to be able to do my sketches either before I went to work or after coming home and needing to put my feet up and rest for a couple hours.

I try to do more intricate artwork on my days off as well as write a blog post, but most of the time I end up not having time for both because what I couldn’t get done on the days I work is left to be done on my days off, which means running errands or getting housework done. I usually reserve one of my days off for doing laundry which sometimes means I can work on larger pieces or paint in between loads of laundry. Today was supposed to be one of those days, however, we have an appointment today which interferes with those plans, so I’m at least working on posting on my blog.

I mentioned in the last post that I was working on another tangle page. I’m not yet finished with it, but here it is so far:

I basically used this page as a sort of practice with various tangle patterns and learning how to make the page feel cohesive by repeating different patterns in various sections. I still have some spaces to fill and shading to do.

What I find interesting is this… when I photograph something I work on and then place it here in my blog, my mind, for some unknown reason, sees it differently. Looking at this piece in the photo, I am better able to visualize some changes I could have made, or how I could have made it more cohesive. I might still be able to do it and may play around with it to see if I can.

The thing I love about tangles is the flexibility of working with them. They can become anything you want them to be. If you look at the bottom right section, I used that tangle in one of my #Inktober2017 sketches, in particular, the one dated 7October2017, for her hair. I changed it slightly but in essence it is the same tangle. I used a similar technique on 10October’s sketch.

I have today’s sketch to do yet which will be done later this afternoon or evening. For now, I need to get ready for our appointment and then do laundry and clean up from our late Thanksgiving dinner we had last night. I don’t always get to the cleanup right away. Yesterday, I was still recovering from working seven days straight. My body ached and I felt tired. At least, I had the energy to cook our long awaited meal and run a couple of errands while we waited for the ham to cook in the slow cooker. (I love my slow cooker.)

On top of this my daughter wasn’t feeling well the past few days. One of my mornings started about an hour earlier than expected with her waking up suddenly and throwing up. On days like that it is hard to leave for work even when she reassures me she is feeling better and will be okay. This maybe why I was compelled to draw such sad faces on a few of my girls for #Inktober.

I want to talk a bit about my sketches so far for #Inktober. I did decide to focus on faces. I just wasn’t sure how it would go. I thought I would incorporate tangles too, but again wasn’t sure how. I am intrigued by the progression of my sketches. The first few obviously reflect the mind of a beginner, someone who is searching or stretching outside of their comfort zone. Some of them not coming out as well as I would have liked them to be but persevering through those uncomfortable moments of wanting to just wad them up in a ball and throw them away.

I’m glad I didn’t.

I love seeing the progress I’m making. I also love certain things about each one and the movement into the more graphic design. The graphic nature of the last few faces I did and incorporating a mandala structure around them in a way represents what I learned in my mandala journey and its influence on my practice of drawing faces. The last sketch I did yesterday, though it isn’t as obvious still contains the graphic structure but now going back and using cross-hatching to add in more dimension.

I did not expect this to happen when I started #Inktober this year and chose faces. I just thought I would work on learning how to draw different facial expressions. I never imagined it would take this turn or journey into possibly discovering a style I would embrace as my own. I am intrigued where the rest of October will take me on this journey.

 

Ongoing progress…

It has been ten days since my last post. Time slips by in varying degrees of progression. Sometimes fast and sometimes not so fast. I’m finding it difficult to get back into the art courses I was taking before I started my new job. I know I’ll get back into them and possibly I’ll need to do it in stages by focusing on a course that is less complicated or more in line with what I want to develop. Basically, my focus since beginning my new job has been mandalas. They started out simple, or what I consider simple for myself and have gained in complexity. Today’s post is about the last two pages I have been working on.

This is a picture of the first one, which I believe I showed in my previous post.

For me this is more complex because it isn’t a single mandala and the mandalas are intersecting. I drew the circles first, then bisected them with the grid lines which I extended out past the furthest most circle to the edges of the paper or almost to the edges. Then I began adding patterns to the different sections. Once I was finished with the patterns I added bits of shading. Here is my progress so far, which I am not sure if it is complete at this stage or not but right now I feel no need to add anything more to it.

When I reached this point in this piece, I started another. The next one I started in my larger art journal. The page is probably twice the size of this one. I felt driven to go even more complex because the simple mandalas were no longer challenging to me. I have taken pictures of this one so far in my progression and it is not complete yet.

This is the first picture I took after I had all the inking done or at least almost done. there are two elements at the top and bottom which call to me to make it darker and add something to them. I am still contemplating what to do with them. This page is about 10 1/2″ x 14″.

I always start my drawings in pencil first, then I ink over them. Some of the elements and patterns added later are done in ink without any pencil. This challenges me to deal with whatever ends up on the page and accepting it as it is or finding ways to incorporate it. The triangles with the circular pattern in them is an example of this. I didn’t like the first one I did. If I had done it in pencil first I would have erased it and chosen something different. Doing it in ink first made me accept what I did and then work with it. I find I am liking them more so now after adding some of the darker elements to them.

These two pictures are the beginnings of adding shading using the warm shades of grey Prisma colored pencils in an attempt to achieve a 3D effect in the grid of the diamond shapes on the outer edge of the mandala.

As it happens when I start trying to create a certain effect, I don’t often see it as I’m working on it. Most times I have to step away from what I’m working on and come back to it a few minutes later in order to see if what I was doing actually created the effect I wanted to achieve.

The next two pictures are closeups of different parts of the page. I am still deciding what to do. Choosing to use colored pencils for the shading was a hard choice to make. I love my black and white ink work but this one is calling out to me to add color. So instead of using graphite for the shading I decided to use colored pencils.

When I look at this piece in it entirety so far, my imagination automatically adds color to various elements. How much color I will add, I am not sure of right now. I want to retain some black and white elements while others call for color.

Having reached this point today with this piece, I have found myself searching for what I’ll be working on next. Adding color will take some time and I know from experience I will want to work on something else as I take breaks from adding the color. This stage is more like coloring in a coloring book which for me doesn’t hold much interest. I’m slowly understanding why that is.

I thought at one time I would love working with colored pencils. However, I am learning something quite interesting about myself. I have always felt an affinity towards water. Therefore, it is not surprising to discover I love working with watercolors. Or using art supplies that can be manipulated by adding water. If I’m not using colored pencils with a liquid or wet product I find them uninspiring even though I can achieve interesting blending by using blending pencils, white or light colored pencils or blending stumps.

One of the other reasons colored pencils don’t appeal to me is they are hard on my wrist. Graphite pencils and ink pens are as well. I can do the work in stages with graphite and ink, whereas colored pencils, especially when coloring in a repeated pattern, I feel I need to complete all the same pattern in one sitting in order to achieve the same result. This can make my wrist very painful. Using brushes and watercolor or art supplies that can be manipulated with water requires a much lighter grip and therefore less stress upon my wrist.

As an artist, it is very frustrating to find myself limited or having to limit myself in order to avoid pain. It is compounded by the understanding that no one really knows what is causing the pain. At first my doctor thought it was a ganglion but the ultrasound disproved that. Then he thought it was arthritis but the x-rays results indicate my bones are healthy with no sign of arthritis. I was sent to a physiotherapist when my doctor then thought it was tendonitis. My physiotherapist feels it isn’t tendonitis and maybe arthritis even though my x-rays show no sign of it. I am hoping over time it will get better and the pain will go away. I take frequent breaks when I’m using a pen or pencil type object and the pain starts. I used to push through the pain and continue working but, that seems to just make it worse so now frequent breaks will have to suffice. Which is why, adding color to this last mandala page will take time and I will find something else to work on when I need to take breaks.

I look at my watercolor facial features study and I want to do more of them or work on watercolor portraits. I showed these in an earlier post and often find myself revisiting them as I have them on display on my mantle.

I find myself hesitant on trying this again or trying a portrait. It is silly to be so afraid of doing something because I’m afraid I won’t be able to repeat what I did before or do something as well as I did before. I sometimes feel like this was a fluke because it was my first in doing facial features in watercolor. In fact, it was my first real attempt at doing anything conceivably realistic in watercolor. It is ridiculous though to feel this way, because I took a break of days if not a week between a couple of these and I was still able to reproduce what I had learned.

I have this strange fear of experimenting with anything, of doing anything remotely creative with art supplies in which I have not already seen someone else do. Even then because it is all new to me, I have this irrational fear of something going terribly wrong. You would think my hands would fall off, or my arms would break or maybe I would go blind if I tried anything new and was not hugely successful at it. I have even let myself imagine just letting go and drawing a wonky face with eyes all askew just to get past this fear and yet I can’t seem to bring myself to do even that.

I am not sure if we develop a perfectionist personality from our environment growing up or if we are born with it. All I know is, I have a tendency to not do something out of fear of it not being perfect when I’m done with it. When I think about it, I have flashes of memory from my childhood of when I didn’t do something well enough to satisfy a parent or someone important to me. Perfectionism is a killer of creativity. Getting past it is a struggle every single time I try to pick up a tool to create something. It infects every part of my life and keeps me from progressing… IF I ALLOW IT….

I HAVE TO MAKE A CONSCIOUS DECISION EVERY MOMENT IN EVERYTHING I DO TO NOT ALLOW THIS PERFECTIONIST MENTALITY TO GET IN MY WAY OF MOVING FORWARD. It is my hope, my next post will be a post about drawing portraits and the next one after that, in doing them in watercolor. I do however retain the right to change my mind and allow myself to be inspired by whatever seems right for the moment.