paint

Well, I took the painting course so I know I can do this. I made just a few okay amateur paintings. The missing ingredient is the practice and I am just not interested enough to practice and get good.

There is only one painting that I did that I actually like. It is technically very bad, and I did it before I took the course. The others are boring. And I have been storing them in a stack.

Someday perhaps I may play with this some more, but that time is not now.

I did enjoy doing this. I don’t feel I failed at it. I just feel I don’t want to pursue it as a goal any more.

I know it’s not much but so far this month I have done one drawing a day. Only the first one was any real work, and that’s not saying much even so. The last three I did were just relaxed little imagination pencil drawings with no realism and no technique.

I think this is what I need to do. I need to be just idlely running the pencil around on the page, making droll faces, not planning the drawing but beginning with a circle and seeing what it turns into: a head, a balloon, the thorax of a monster…

This goal is back on track.

The original intention of this goal was to get me back into the habit of doing art. In that I have failed. I haven’t been doing art regularly. It’s definitely not a habit once more.

The biggest basic problem is that I no longer use paper but use a computer and that means I don’t doodle.

I did however did fill a sketch book and take that painting course to encourage me to draw and paint and I finished all the paintings in the course.

I don’t want to give up on this…

Today I did a drawing inspired by the webcomic “Goblins”.

The legless young lady in the stretcher is a kobold named “Yala” whom I am desperately hoping will survive. It doesn’t look good, so I made up my alternate reality. Here she is at the dressing station after the battle being given a mug of cocoa.

I can’t do art or anything which requires a surface to work on because my husband has installed his printer on my desk so he can hook it up to my computer while his computer is kaput and waiting for yet another new power supply.

I have no place to work.

Maybe in a few days though. I have been looking through images to see if I can find anything that will inspire me.

Today I finished my sketchbook. I have filled it completely with figure studies. Figure studies are usually the things that interest me most when drawing.

Now I need to either finish the painting of the pond that I began around December, or else finish one other painting. I have no other paintings started so I’d have to do one start to finish.

My big difficulty with this goal is wanting to do it well, when I do it badly, so being intimidated.

It’s very nice to be making progress!

Today I looked at one of the drawing books that I put on my desk yesterday and I decided that I wouldn’t work with it, after going through it and deciding I liked it because it uses some older people as models not just those perky nubile nudes.

Art inspired by young bodies can be so barbie doll.

Then I did a drawing. Yes I did. My first official pencil sketch since the death in September.

Ooh! Actual progress.

Yesterday I took two drawing books down from the shelf and placed them prominently on my desk on top of my sketchbook. Today I went to the store to see if they had any of those inexpensive big canvases and they hadn’t.

So I have done two things towards this goal and can say I am not given up entirely. However I haven’t actually done any drawing or painting since I last made an entry under this goal…

I’m pretty near having this goal finished. My reservation is that outside of the painting class I haven’t really got painting or doing art work in as a routine. Realistically I don’t think I should expect to have art as part of my lifestyle. I have too many other projects on the go. I have a full time job, two kids still living at home, I am taking a correspondence course in accounting, I have a full health and development routine, I am studying music, and whenever I possibly can I work on writing fiction.

So, given that painting was a temporary goal of mine, what do I need to do to call it finished?

Way back at the beginning of this time I was trying to fill a sketch book with figure studies and get it done by the time the art course began. Only with something like five or six pages left to go my aunt reached her final hours and I missed that deadline. What I would like to do is go back and finish the sketchbook.

Today I hunted around until I found the thing and put it in my current projects stack. With luck I will work on it over the next few days.

I also have a landscape painting half finished, but I am intimidated by it and realistically I don’t know if I even want to go back and try to complete it. It’s not like I’m going to put the thing up on display. It’s only a practice piece so I shouldn’t be intimidated. I have to decide if finishing that painting will be necessary to complete this goal.

I have finished my painting course and finished my most recent painting. It was done Thursday night. Like the boat, I think this one is okay. I’m told the composition could be improved but I think it is good enough. It’s nice to feel I can do this!

Here is my painting of a lighthouse. I am not impressed with this one either. I got the perspective wrong again and had to widen the tower. But I had already painted the red railings at the top and I couldn’t widen them so the result is that they don’t extend far enough.

I think I am making progress, and since these are exercises painted for the painting course I didn’t think I was ready to take yet I don’t expect perfection or even anything very good. As long as I am picking up more ability I am going in the right direction.