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Finished painting: Otherworldly Winds (plus my short story Lucid)
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.
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More Gestural Sketches
I suppose I apply a wide definition of what a gesture drawing is – if the spirit of the drawing is meant to be gestural, even if the end result becomes too detailed or tight, I think it still counts. While drawing these pages, I was thinking of the “not this / this” photo that is on Proko’s How to Draw Gesture guide*. I agree that the action lines are the quintessential nature of a gesture drawing. I just don’t always get there, hah.
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Gesture Drawings to the Rescue
I was really struggling to get started drawing tonight. I opened my sketchbook, sketching and erasing the same figure like 10 times before just sketching and inking a couple of face studies. Those also felt sloppy and forced. Fortunately, given I didn’t want to stay up too late tonight, the time crunch pushed me towards some quick gestures instead. And I really like how they turned out!
Keep your muse happy
