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Finished Painting: Chemise Study
I was thinking I’d title this painting “A Soft Chemise” or something, but it was meant to be a study of cloth folds, so maybe just keeping “study” in the title works. I don’t want to have to title every sketch and drawing in my sketchbook. That would be rough, giving things titles is just ugh. Yesterday’s experiments were useful, though I ended up using a lot less of the iridescent paint – just on the gold slippers.
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Saturday sketching through aches and pains
And now for a sketchbook with mixed-media paper! I can layer markers and not have it bleed through the other side. I can even use fountain pens and then blend with a water brush! ::Happy dance:: Well, happy dance indeed, if I hadn’t been dealing with some muscle and nerve pain today. Grrr.
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Sketchbooks: Sept. & Oct. 2020 (and new altar setup)
This post has been sitting in draft mode, pictures all ready to go, but no words. The longer it sits, collecting virtual dust bunnies, the harder it is to write something to go with it! How the heck does anybody find a creative cadence that works?!
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Mark Making Part 12: Soft Pastels
Now we’ve come to the dry mediums that I rarely use, such as pastel – and next after this, charcoal. Ever since moving to my own apartment (eek, 10 years ago ::stares into the far distance over the insistent passage of time::), I just prefer to avoid potential mess. I miss having studio space – or at the very least space in my parents’ house where I was less worried about losing a security deposit if I spilled a bunch of charcoal dust into the carpet. I’ve been looking at photos and videos of art studios recently, pining over creating an improved setup. Most of the studio tour videos I…
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Mark Making Part 11: Col-Erase and Other Pencils
Yay, more gesture drawings! Col-erase and gesture drawings go so well together. The lead is just soft enough to flow easily on the page without too much smudging. Once again, I used Line of Action, Quick Poses, and Pexels for reference photos. I’m feeling more comfortable with the overall figure, compared to face drawings. I’ve been defaulting to cartoon-ish or stylized manga looking faces, rather than looking at sweeping lines or form. Which was okay for this, as the purpose was to use each pencil for any kind of mark. Yet, I feel drawn to practicing realism and grounding my art more in fundamentals. Learning the “right” fundamentals is an…
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Mark Making Part 10: Prismacolor Pencils
Prismacolor colored pencils are one of my favorite mediums; I find them relaxing, perhaps in part because they are a medium with relatively minimal setup and cleanup. They also blend well over other mediums, like markers or watercolor, making it tempting to include them in other traditional art illustrations. I keep mine organized by color in a large pencil case, which is a much better set up then my Copic marker situation of having all of them jumbled together in a photo keepsake box from Michaels (though at $3, the photo boxes work well enough for many of my art supplies. Plus you can label them within the pretty front…
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Grounding and Centering
Lately, as this new routine of isolation and extra caution settles in, I’ve been turning to nature and spirituality for comfort and guidance. I wish it hadn’t taken a crisis to help nudge me into this direction, as I’m realizing just how much I was missing having spirituality in my life as a primary part of every day. Spending more time in nature, reading books I’ve been meaning to get around to, journaling more (in my private, personal journal), tending to my altar: it’s all been helping me to feel more grounded and centered. I’m feeling more motivated, knowing I’m trying to align many parts of my soul, including my…
Keep your muse happy
