Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Mystery Man



 I was doing some more pastel practice, creating a portrait.  After quite a lot of lost time in which I got completely absorbed in it ( I love when that happens), I stopped, stepped back and looked and thought "Who are you?"  He started out very differently, and I almost feel like I just exposed a face that was already there rather than creating him from my imagination.  Anyway, he's a total mystery to me, and I like wondering about his story. 


Monday, September 8, 2014

Back to the Basics

I signed up for an online class from Gillian Lee Cox a lifetime ago it felt like, and it was starting in April just as my life went crazy.  I've now finally started it, and am really enjoying it. It feels like a condensed college art course, and is the closest I'll ever get to that, but from Gillian's wonderful perspective.  I don't take too many online art classes, I'm notoriously bad about doing all the exercises, and tend to just watch the teacher do the exercises and skip to doing the fun stuff myself, even though I know better.  So I'm trying to be better this time, and am being semi-successful.  I can't claim to be doing all the exercises, but I'm doing better than my average I'd say.

Below are some of them, so far it's just been some drawing and some work with soft pastels and color theory. I hesitated to post these as they're nothing special, but since this blog is supposed to be a record of my art journey, and I have nothing else to show for my time, I'm inflicting them on unsuspecting passersby anyway. 

I'm starting with my favorite - this is when I finally figured out that, OH, that's what Gillian was going on about - doing pastels on a textured surface really does make all the difference!  This is done on a piece of very fine sandpaper.  It's inspired by part of a painting I tore out of a magazine years ago- unfortunately none of the artist info was on it.




These two are pre- AHA moment

 




Some drawing exercises