Spinning

 So hard not to get caught up in the comparing game. It seems everyone is light years ahead of me in painting know-how and skills. I know what I want and I'm so not there yet. I do believe in practice (I do, I do), but sometimes it feels futile, like I'm just spinning my wheels never to arrive. 

These are drawings that want to be paintings or (in the bottom one) a drawing of someone else's painting. What am I doing?????

What are you doing?

What's all the fuss?

Finished the apple peels. Not sure what I think. It was fun till I got fussy with it. Fussy usually means taking the work too seriously. A little fuss is fine...cleaning things up is noble, but a lot of fuss is drudgery and leads to an overworked painting. 

Putting down fresh deliberate marks not only makes a better painting but it's so much more satisfying and fun. On my list of things I want to focus on (ie. improve) this is pretty high.

What's on your list?

Biting off more than I can chew

 Every once in a while I start a pastel that I consider biting off more than I can chew. In other words, a subject matter that I think will be challenging for some reason. Often times it's an out-of-the-ordinary reference. In this case it's apple peels (which, of course works well with the chew metaphor :)  Here is the drawing and block in that I did today. Hopefully I will update it as I work on it.

I often do this after I've had a few days in a row of lousy painting. It's a way of working out my feelings of frustration. If I create a challenge that I think is beyond my skills, then it's fine if it doesn't work out. This frees me up to to enjoy the process which is what I really want to be doing all the time anyway. It serves as a sort of restart button.

What gets you out of a painting funk?

What does a daily art practice look like?

 I am taking a new tac with this blog. I have a daily art practice but so often it is just me and my sketchbook or me and my pastels. There are so many of us artists out there all working in solitude.  Our "good" work shows up on our instagram feed or our website but that stuff is only the tip of the iceberg.  

What if we were to share our struggle, our messy and not very linear process, our frayed journey? I guess I'll find out.

Here's today's figure drawing. They aren't great but I'm being brave! Besides getting the gesture of the pose I want to start getting comfortable with putting in the head and some indication of the face. I used to leave out heads all the time because, well, they're hard! Now I'm trying to face my fear of heads.

What's your fear?