Finding Art Again

There is nothing worse than a “I haven’t updated in a while” entry, but I suppose that is what this will be.  It isn’t for lack of creativity, since the past two months have had me busy with several projects, but ultimately something falls through the cracks and this online blog was one of them.

My first drawing ATC style

I’ve discovered the addictive world of Art Trading Cards which has kept me busy in my off hours.  It isn’t so much the promise of a card trade that motivates me; it’s more a matter of the size of the work.  I find that after a long day of working on data and programming, I really want to draw or paint but working on a traditionally sized “large” piece isn’t what I’m up for.  Sometimes I’m just looking for what I call the quick win.  Art cards fill this need because the can be completed quickly and you can experiment a little without feeling like you are ruining a whole lot of paper if it doesn’t work out. 

Day of the Dead Bride

My first pieces were fun and simple a few day of the dead inspired skulls, a robot and a mushroom. It is standard iconography for me.  

Fantasy FlowerMushrooms

Feeling dissatisfied with the saturation of color in my watercolor’s so far I used the cards to experiment with darker or more intense colors. Abstract landscape type pieces in the small format allowed me to be comfortable experimenting.  I feel most of it worked out quite well for me.  They also allowed me to loosen up a bit. 

TomatoColored Pencil Landscape Red Landscape

Green Landscape

Longer Landscape on Scrap WC Paper

Concept for The World Card

Autumn brings about its own set of extra distractions. Holiday decorating, baking and crafting are prominent players in my life and well being.  I did start a few craft items, and did finish painting a pre-purchased paper-mache skull but I accomplished much less crafting than I wanted to.  The calendar seems to be opening up and I know I will find myself with that extra time to be creative that I crave. 

Two of Pumpkins

Halloween Jack

Halloween Medusa

It feels good to move on.  I completed some details on these last night. I look forward to some blank paper.

Jack-o-Lantern

Pumpkins on the Hill

I really like the guy on the right. The hill was awful until I stamped the darker green over it to give it a texture. I forget you can do stuff like that sometimes. In retrospect I wish I have put a moon in the sky. I also need to work on my light-sources as I’m being sloppy paying attention to that stuff.

Pink Flowers

This piece is love-hate for me. Sometimes I like it, sometimes I hate it. It would have been better if I used real ones instead of the photo I took.  It has an interesting graphic appeal though.

Feel free to comment. I’m off to work on the next set.  If you are wondering why I turn out a few at a time – since I like to layer my watercolors one over the other, I can keep working by switching to another project while one dries.

Musical Transformation

As an artist you are most often taught to draw and paint what is physically there whether it be a coffee mug or an action figure or a piece of fruit. Inevitably you are tossed a standard project which calls for you to draw or paint every thing that isn’t the focus of your piece. The object is reveled by rendering everything it isn’t.  It seems logical that if you define everything that something isn’t, you in fact define what it is.

CTHULHU?

 I value the exercise in what it does to illustrate the importance of spatial relationships but could this concept not be carried deeper? Could it not be expanded to reveal more?

 Yesterday seemed to be a day for me to dwell on what my current artistic endeavors were not.  Not good enough, not pretty, not what I intended.  In front of me was a solid wall of dissatisfaction.  Solid so I believed.  It was foolish of me to forget the spiral cycle that everything is.

 I learned long ago that everything comes back around.  “Full Circle” is what they call it, although it isn’t exactly correct since you arrive where you started, but one level up from where you were before, like a spiral staircase. The whole key is that single step up.

Magician

 Last night, as I was flipping through a book on drawing I noticed the negative space exercise.  I laughed to myself thinking that I was in a negative space. Zap! It occurred to me that if I was in a negative space, I should be able to see everything that the positive space is not, and through this, to see the positive space again.  This wasn’t only a simple exercise in art; it was an exercise in life. 

 So thinking about my recent works I could see how in one piece I may not have had the best brush control, but I got the color to look exactly as vibrant as I intended. In another piece, the color may have been bland, but it was exactly the texture I was hoping for.  Soon the steps I was traveling became clear again. You might say I could once again see the positive space for having dwelled in the negative. 

 Dare I carry the concept further? The ultimate truth was this:  Although I was having an artistic struggle at the moment, I was having one because I was actually practicing art again.  The negative space of struggle, revealed the positive space clear as day. No struggle, no art.  In that instant the positive was the negative space, and the negative positive and you could say that I found Art once again.

Oak Spiral