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Slow hot summer doldrums

It’s been a bit longer than I’d like for this post. But It’s been a hot wet, take it easy kind of summer break.

But it’s time for school season to kick off and that means a return to a bit of routine, so I’m looking forward to a bit more structured weekends and getting back in front of the canvas again.

I’m fascinated by a recurring theme I’ve noticed myself exploring subconsciously, so I’m do some exploration and hopefully get some new paintings out of it.. and I’ve got to get the Undine III painting’s sketches & comps a bit further along.

On the website front, the performance has been really really really bad so I’m moving it this weekend hopefully. Lots of posts and configurations to move, but I expect it to not be too bad.

But It’s so bad on the Hostgator hosting account that even this little post has taken over an hour due to loading and image failures etc…

Beyond Exhaustion/ no more spoons/ determination, poses that show the contrast between the mental drives at conflict have really been speaking to me.
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New Work and busy times

Undine Sketch 1

I’ve settled on a theme for the next series of paintings, the Undine. Beautiful water spirits rising from the water as they discover love yet dealt a tragic fate should their lover become unfaithful to them. I want to capture the fluid watery essence of them and give thought to the mournful tragedy of their inevitable betrayal from those they love.

It will be at least a series of 3 16×20 paintings and I’ve already got the first board primed and on the easel, waiting for me to finish the drawing.

Continue reading New Work and busy times
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It’s time to go homeschool myself

There was a great thread in the Fantasy Art Workshop facebook group about sketchbooks that really got me thinking.  I love my sketchbooks, and I burn through them at a fairly terrifying rate.  And that’s ok, because in my mind they’re totally disposable, they’re just for practice.   But paintings,  those are for some reason trapped in this ‘precious item’ category where there is no room for experimentation, trial and error or anything other than execution of an already realized image.

And as a result of that mentality, I’m not painting enough.  

I need a painting equivalent of a sketchbook, permission to myself to totally f up the canvas and then just toss it.

And then Michaels sends an email that they’re now offering Bulk items. 

Like canvases.  Cheap.  And lots of them.

So I stocked up. 

 I now have a pile of  40 8 x 10 canvases are now sitting next to me ready to be played with. I’ve made a checklist of exercises that I want to do, and setting myself some basic ground rules.

  • 3 days per painting MAX before it moves to the side
  • when it is put to the side only minor tweaks, retouches allowed
  • only one painting on the side at a time.
  • Run out of canvases before August 1.

I’m so excited! Here we go…

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Working on many things

Boy did this year go whizzing by.  I’m hoping to finish up the year with one last acrylic painting. It isn’t looking like I’ll hit the 12 Paintings in a year that I hoped for.  On the other hand I did blow that goal out of the water if you measure it by surface area.  I was originally planning on 18×24 being the default size until I fell for the box 30x40s.

I’m still hoping to do all of next year in oils, but I may delay the start of that until the Jeff Miracola oil videos are launched, that would let me experiment a bit with acrylics before then.

Still having a hard time letting go of the feeling that everything has to be the most complete piece that pushes skills to the limit.  I may do a bit of a mini quickndirty Painting challenge.

But for now the end of the year looks to be coming fast and that has all sorts of repercussions to ‘free’ time.

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Gestures Galore

Still at it.  Wow, it’s amazing how much of a difference repeated practice makes.  Just in the pure eye to hand motion of being able to capture things in the right size / position.

Additionally I’m making excellent progress on the thirtydays.club website.  The whole thing is coming together and I hope to have it ready for a late October launch.

On the downside.. the 3TB drive went belly up and a bunch of not essential but useful stuff went byebye..  All the really important things were of course backed up.. but there were a couple huge folders of painting videos that I’m going to miss having around. (the backup stopped working in June when I had to re-install the OS)..

Continue reading Gestures Galore

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Gestures – the halfway mark updates 9 and 10

And to wrap up the second week, updates 9 and 10.

Still working on getting the badges system put into the whole thirtydays.club sit, and defining the suggested ‘rules’   But essentially I’m leaning towards enforcing it to a minimum of 5 updates per 7 day period (ie work days only) so that will allow for weekends off or vacation etc.  Also you’ll be able to post images for the current 7 day period all at once, that discourages cheating and encourages returning to the site regularly.   Still need to look into scheduled emails, or a 1 click create a calendar entry to import to your ical or google calender, to help keep the user focused on the task.

figure-drawing-09

figure-drawing-10

 

Looking back to day 1, I can clearly see that the basic 1 minute gestures are feeling much more confident.

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Gestures days 6-8

So I’m giving myself weekends off, so 5 exercises a week for 4 weeks.

I’ve started building out the thirtydays.club a website for letting artists do this same thing and share the results and earn badges for completing a challenge.  I’ve got a good 7 or 8 different challenges already planned out and the core guts (forum, social integration) is pretty much there already.

I hope to have the core platform up and running by some time in October.

Anyway here’s the next 3 studies. Continue reading Gestures days 6-8

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What’s Next- 30 days of drawing

So I discovered that the focus of having a real imaginary (??!) deadline helped keep me focused even when the epic skies image was wearing me down.  So I made a list of all the things that I know I really need to work on and came up with a list.  Then I organized that list based on  a. how fundamental it is, and b. how much improvement I think i can get froma month’s worth of focused study.

And so it came to be that the next 30 days will be spend doing 1,2 and 5 minute life drawing gestures (using a wonderful Youtube channel called the Croquis Cafe)

Continue reading What’s Next- 30 days of drawing