I spoke too soon

Turns out I wasn't getting better but instead going from being moderately sick to properly full-on sick. The kind where you don't leave the couch except to go lie down in bed and sleep. So the only creative thing I've done lately was create a massive quantity of used tissues :) I missed the most gorgeous sunny weather on Friday and Saturday while I huddled under blankets and tried to block out the light. I love spring so very, very much that on the first day of t-shirt weather I try to spend as many daylight hours as I can outside, and this year I was sick.

Anyway, that's enough whining for one post. Here's a picture of my pretty tree that I took last week. Happy spring, everyone!

Sick-y

Good gravy, it's been ages! I got sick again...soon as the weather turned unseasonably cold, I was out. I don't know about you, but I can't draw when I'm sick. I try, but I can tell it's wrong and can't see why and end up scrapping the whole thing. I think I'm on the mend (and the weather is a bit more spring-like) so I hope I'll have something new to show soon.

Sewing

Finished this one yesterday. Same size, gouache, etc. I guess I don't have much to say about this one :) I think the only problem I had was tweaking the fingers on the hand holding the needle so they looked ok as line drawings...something that's come up a lot in this pieces. If I were doing a lot of subtle shading and 3-d type modeling, things look ok even if they're foreshortened or at an odd angle, but as line drawings I seem to need them to look more simplified in order to read correctly.

I'm driving in to Seattle today to hang up my pieces for the show this month. I don't mind hanging, it's the carrying of heavy frames in from my car which will have to be parked a block away that I don't care for :)

Book

This time - a person reading a book. Are you sensing a theme here? :) These drawings are all about me (but not of me, exactly) and I love reading. Also I just picked up knitting recently - hence the hat and scarf. Is that too boring? I feel like if I explain too much about what I was thinking when I decide what I want to draw it's not interesting anymore. I hope even if I'm doing something literal that it also reads as more narrative and ambiguous (why are these people going outside, for example) but I worry.

I like thinking about creating things - even if it's just a hat - and then using them for something. I thought as long as I'm overcoming my fears and using the figure that they should be doing something and definitely not nude. I'm so over the "figure drawings that are nude just because that's what everyone does" type of drawings. Not that some of them aren't beautiful, but I don't think most of them have anything personal to say. But maybe it's too tediously personal to draw a knitted hat, so I don't know :)

Oh, same as last time, 11x14" on Fab hot press, graphite and gouache.

Hat

I was working on two of these at once, so it's been a little longer to finish one than usual. I have really mixed feelings about this piece. Sometimes I like it, and sometimes there's something I don't like about it, but I'm not sure what :) I usually just toss things that I'm not sure about in a drawer, but I think there's something here that's interesting. And also I'm trying to be more brave and show things online even if I'm not totally sure about them.

Anyway, it's another 11x14" on Fabriano hot press in graphite and gouache. I liked the photo I drew it from but somehow I don't think it's reading as "person putting on a hat" with some details left out. But I also think I've been staring at it for too long and I can't really tell anymore. I'm getting a few more things finished up for a show in Seattle in March and unfortunately that means I couldn't just draw this up and set it aside for a couple weeks until I figured out if there was something I didn't like (which is what I would normally do). It's good for me to not look at a piece and then sneak up on it and get a fresh look at it again - does that make sense? It sounds nutty :)

Little oil paintings to go along with the gouache

Here's two oil paintings that I did a couple of days ago and had to wait for them to dry a little bit before I moved them. I worked on them both at the same time - one advantage of working small is that I can fit two canvases on the easel at once. I wanted to try the same kind of lines with color blocks like in the gouache pieces but with more blended areas and less plain white.

I'm getting better at stopping myself before I blend away all the rougher areas like I used to. I feel like if I go back and take away all the unblended edges it loses some of the liveliness. Which is ok too, but I did those last year and I wanted to change things up :) And I'm learning to love when the geometry starts to go wobbly because I'm using oil paint and brushes and not pencils and rulers. I try to keep going back to what it is that I love about oil painting which is taking a solid line and blending out parts of it, and putting brushy scrubby texture all over. There's no way to do all that and maintain a perfect right angle...well, I can't, anyway.

Fey Handmade

I got an email a couple of weeks ago about participating in Fey Handmade's online shop and I thought it sounded like a good opportunity so I decided to go for it. It's free to participate with a commission taken from sales so there's not really any risk from my end of things.

I was checking to see when my pieces would show up and lo and behold, Leah's work is on there too! And today when my work was uploaded, I found Brittni's and Letha's gorgeous pieces as well! I feel very lucky seeing my artwork among all this work that I admire :)