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Practicing in Between (Part 1 & 2)
Winter’s begun and the longest night is here. I’m ready for fresh starts, a new year, and lengthening daylight slowly inching back towards spring. I’ve been practicing art quite a bit, and am so close to filling two sketchbooks: a multimedia one and a smaller drawing one (hopefully a sketchbook share video is coming in the near future 🤞). Today I have 25 sketchbook pages to share in this post (!!!). And I came up with the idea for an ongoing series that I’ve just begun, with a new original character!
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Weekend Wanderings
Oh my goodness, posting to my blog again?! It’s that Imbolc energy. ^_^ I’ve been making art over the last year, but haven’t had the energy or focus to blog about it. Definitely suffering from an all-or-nothing mind set, when it comes to what I think I should be doing regarding my blog. It’s annoying to keep relearning the whole “imperfection is okay” lesson. T_T And I keep thinking I’ll scan/photograph my work from 2021 that didn’t make it into here yet, but why not start with a little drawing I finished today?
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Finished painting: Otherworldly Winds
Finished, yay! This painting started as an intuitive painting, so the color palette is a bit strange to say the least. I tried to wrestle it into something cohesive, but it seemed to slide out of my grasp and become a bright, tangled mess. Still, I’m very happy with how this turned out. Happy enough that I might order some 6×8″ prints of it for fun.
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Petals (Otherworldly Winds WIP part 3)
This digital painting is taking way longer than I anticipated! I’m hoping the weekend will give me enough time to finish it up. Of course, it just had to be on one of my “practice size” canvases (2000p by 2500px). At least it’s at 300 dpi and still big enough to print a 6×8″ art print, if I decide to do that. Though a little cropping on the sides and bottom will occur. Whenever I create a new canvas and think “oh this will just be for practice, let’s keep the file size smaller” I should just not do that.
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Sketchbook Eye Interlude
Today felt like a busy day but also a very draining day. Here in the Midwest it’s one of those cold, icy, end-of-winter days, when we just had a little taste of spring weather only a week ago, but now there’s snow on the ground again. And the tension of the weather change has been putting me on the edge of a migraine for the past two days (that fortunately hasn’t seemed to hit full force, yay?). Thus, tonight is a “gentle as possible” art practice: opening my sketchbook and drawing simple, easy doodles.
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Starry Skies (Otherworldly Winds WIP part 2)
I’m not sure if I’d still call this an intuitive painting, now that it’s becoming more realistic. Can a painting be more realistic and still be intuitive? Are all paintings intuitive to one degree or another? All I know is I’m frustrated I had to cut myself short (again) and leave it unfinished! Grrr! But, still, progress! Shiny glowing stars! I’ll take victories where I can get them.
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Otherworldly Winds: Work In Progress
Here is one way to balance art and the rest of daily life: just find a stopping point after an hour and say “good enough for now, the rest will be waiting tomorrow” and cut yourself some slack. I have not been having a good day and was tempted to check out and just read in bed wrapped in a blanket nest. Instead, I turned to that form of art that is always a warm embrace for me: intuitive painting.