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Calming Cloud Drawings in Colored Pencil & Marker
More small studies, similar to my lace ones that I recently posted. This time the focus was clouds and thinking of them more as three dimensional forms rather than flat. These studies were fun and quick, and a nice way to start December. I’ve tried to approach these as: OK what’s the simplest, easiest and fun version of the subject I’m studying – even if it’s a doodle on scrap notebook paper – and how can I refine and push that version to something else? Hopefully this approach challenges me while still allowing me to maintain a non-judgemental view of my skill as an artist overall.
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Creating Fantasy Inspiration Boards
This post comes from working through a short Skillshare class by Gabrielle Bricky called “Create Inspiration Boards & Streamline Your Artistic Process” The whole course was only 10 minutes, but I found it very inspiring! I liked Gabrielle’s approach on organizing Pinterest boards — so much so that I finally kicked myself in gear and organized my entire Pinterest account, ha. Which was amazing to finally clean up. I made most of my many boards private, but then opened up the four that I made for this class on my public Pinterest Profile.
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Dancing Sorceress Redux
Redraws of art are so satisfying 😠This one is from my multimedia sketchbook, which I finished this past spring. I still feel very rusty and unsure with watercolor paint, but I so enjoy the medium. The original painting was from 2017. The second was from January 21, 2023 but done fairly quickly with no references or planning. The last was finished three days later on January 23, 2023, but with some thumbnail sketches, gathering of some references, looking at jewelry designs, etc.
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Refilling the Well
Taking the time yesterday to just relax and have a nice date night was much needed. I’ve been pushing myself to post here every day, and while I want to post as often as possible, there is a balance in creating and then resting to refill the well of inspiration. And coming back into the practice, I sunk into a nice intuitive painting: free from any plans or expectations. Leaf shapes are still my current artistic comfort-food of choice.
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Embracing Sketchbook Messiness
If I want to finish my current sketchbook before the end of spring, I calculated (a couple of days ago) that I need to finish an average of 1.5 pages a day. Is doing that calculation a sign that my need to control chaos is creeping into my art practice again?
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Apples and Butterflies and Beloved Playlists
I’m glad I filled a sketchbook page, even if at first it felt like my heart wasn’t in it tonight. Pushing past the “I don’t feel like this/I don’t know what to draw that’s good enough” thoughts and into painting and drawing as an act of love for the practice itself: is that the secret to maintaining a regular art practice?
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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.