Painting a Day - Day 7

We are buying a mixer for the kitchen.  I don't care if its electric or one of those crank thingy ones... we are buying one tomorrow.

What does this have to do with painting?  I'll tell you.

After a long day, I came back home and napped.  My dog seemed to find herself barking every 10 minutes or so and the napping didn't go as well as I'd like.  When I got up I was a bit groggy and cranky.  Dinner rolled out and I had already said I was going to make this Apple Souffle thing, so I had to go do that.  Everything was fine till the egg whites had to be beaten.  I somehow got it in my head that I could do this by hand and manage fine.  As all the other things had been done, including heating the apple bits, I couldn't let it sit unfinished.  So... for about an hour, I hand beat the egg whites till they got as fluffy and thick as I could manage.  My arms hurt.... my wrists hurt - I switched back and forth with the whisk.  Then it was the finishing of the dessert and heating it and all that jazz.  On the upside, my souffle didn't drop and the dessert tasted pretty good! (I'll share the recipe if you want in the next blog).  

The downside:  I was more tired, my arms hurt and it wasn't till about 10:30 that I could sit down at the easel.  I tried to paint and yeah, I got something on the canvas that sort of resembles an appaloosa pony in a field of grass.. but I'm not happy with it.  But I know that you can work and work and work on something and if it starts off wrong and keeps going wrong then you are just going to make more wrong.  Now, its not horrible.  And most likely, the average person might not see much problem with it - but I see it as wrong and so... it irks me.  It is sort of a bummer to end on with such a great bunch of little paintings... so I may end up adding a Day 8 to the process.  Just so I can end on a high note before moving on.  

*sigh*

Painting a Day - Day 6

I did it again!

It almost didn't happen today.  I was really worn out and almost slept through any time I might have been able to paint.  As it was, I didn't really feel it was done till enough to walk away till 12:00 (midnight).  It isn't a fully detailed but it is done enough to feel it is finished.  Its a picture of a geisha and it is the first full person I've done in this little exercise.  While I am happy with how her face came out and all, I really like the texture of the robe which looks like satin.  

My confidence is growing and that's a good thing too.  I have one more painting tomorrow to do and after that, I think it will be a painting a week.  But we'll see.  I still have one more and in the end, I have to say, that while I wanted to do 100 days - 100 paintings, this was a good jump start back into this medium that I have ignored for so long.  

I still don't know how this will all work out and what it will lead to, but I feel good and as stated before, excited about doing new things.  The fact that I've managed to do paintings in a night, makes me feel like larger oil paintings won't be so intimidating and un-doable because a fear of time and it taking forever.  

I'm already thinking of getting more comfortable with the acrylics which I've done here and there.  I just need to remember to use extenders so it doesn't all dry up - but there is something to say for paint that takes soooo long to dry.  Ahhh to find a happy medium (uh... pun possibly intended).

Painting a Day - Day 5

Another one bites the dust!

I did another painting tonight - and I'm very happy with it since it really looks like a real painting and not some lame attempt at a painting.  I almost didn't do it, but forced myself to get up and go paint.  Yes, I watched "America's Next Top Model", "Ghost Hunters" and "Top Chef" while I did it, but I did do it.  

Pooka asked what I've painted so I'll give a brief description of the 5 I've done so far.  The first one was based off a photograph  of an Italian countryside view.  The second one was based off a photograph but I changed the animal pictures to a dragon.  The third was based from a painting and is a black winged angel.  The fourth is a castle and the one I did is a Japanese garden with a woman in a red robe.  If all goes well, I'll be able to post them all up here this weekend.  

All of them are oil paintings and almost all of them are from photographs.  So far, they are no larger than 5 x 7 and the next one will be 5 x 7 as well.  I chose that size because I thought it would be big enough to do something on without being so big as to cause a problem for me to get it done.  Something too big and it might take me longer.  Also the smaller size makes it less intimidating for me to approach the canvas.  I really feel like a painter now, looking at these works I've done, not just an illustrator.  Once the week is done, I may move to try and do a painting a week - maybe not oil colors, but a full painting of whatever size I feel like.  This will also allow the oils to dry more when I use them and layer the color better.  Having only a few hours to do something, forces me to be less... detailed than I usually am.  Its plus side is that I remove my more critical anal eye and work more with an impressionistic feel.  This is giving the paintings some energy instead of looking stiff.  Its also forcing me to loosen up which is nice.  Yes, there is some frustration when the paint lifts or blends too much, but its good for me to be working with it.  

When I move tot he painting a week, I am going to try and combine the painterly with the illustrative and see where I can go with it.  I'm excited and that's a good feeling.

Painting a Day - Day 4

I did another one!  I'm very happy I've been keeping this up.  I managed another painting even with a full day of work again and I feel so good about it too!  I think I like this one the best so far and sadly...  NO WIRE!  It really is upsetting that I can post the pictures on here yet.  I'm really hoping to find the wire soon so I can at least show them.  

I still have work to do on my skills.  And I think I need new brushes.  I'm getting used to using the oils and realizing how much I have to let them sit before I can put paint on top of previously painted areas.  The paintings are small which helps to keep me focused. 

We'll see how it all goes tomorrow.  I don't want to lose the whole momentum.  This also makes me think of doing this again in the future, but I want to get through this 7 days of the painting a day thing.  

Painting a Day - Day 3

Got a third one done.  This one I like a little bit better than the one yesterday.  The difficulty today was doing a painting after a full day of work.  It was much harder to get the drive to get over to the easel to do a painting as I was really tired.  I took a nap in fact and had to get my butt out of bed to start using the brushes.  

I finished the painting but it isn't as detailed as the first.  It has a nice affect though.  I'm just proud of myself for doing the painting even though I was tired and not really up for it.  

Hopefully will continue on tomorrow.

Still no cord.  I think I will just wait till friday and do a mad insane clean up and see if I can uncover it.  

Pooka: Thanks for the suggestion, I'm not sure I'll buy a card reader though for the camera.  I might see if Dave Y has a cord or reader and see if that works.  

Other than that, I do have to also rework my website.  The plan is to remake it though most of the format will be the same.  The biggest issue is that I want to do a rollover with the artwork so that the icons will show the artwork instead of clicking on it to bring it up.  So any advice on making that happen or how I can make that happen would be cool!  

Painting A Day - Day 2

ARGH!  

Still no luck finding the cable to the digital camera.  I KNOW I had one because I did use it.  I think along with the whole 'getting back to art' I need to get back to cleaning and organizing!

I did another painting today.  I don't like it as much as the first one.  I think it felt very forced because I have Balticon coming and I felt like I HAD to do something fantasy related.  I need to remember that when I force it, I end up getting very frustrated and angry and then all things move slowly or badly.  I started two other paintings that will get painted over because of this.  Luckily these are all being done on small canvases (to help ensure they will get finished in a day) so the investment of my energy wasn't as great, but still it was frustrating.  

Another thing is.. I see I have comments but... I don't know how to respond to them.  Don't laugh!  If I click on the comment I can read it, but there is only a comment box next to it and it doesn't list it as 'reply to this comment' so I'm not sure if that will reply to the comment or post a whole new comment.  I'm such a retard some times!  

So to Pooka, thank you for replying, I think you are the only one reading this!  But I appreciate it. 

We'll see how tomorrow goes on the painting front.  

Painting a Day - Day 1

Ok.... I DID do a painting today and I took a digital photo of it.  Unfortunately I cannot find the wire that connects the camera to the computer so I can get the image to the internet.  Frustration is too weak a word right now to describe how I feel about that.  I will try and scan it in tomorrow - its an oil painting and I don't want to smear it or get it on the scanner glass.  I'll figure it out.  Tomorrow I have to do another painting so hopefully between now and then, I'll find that wire.

I feel really good about the painting - not because its good and is pretty much the way I wanted it to be, but because I haven't touched oil paints since college and it was great painting with them again.  And I have to admit, there is something about the smell of oils.  Now, I'm using the Artisan Water Soluble oil paints.  The reason is that in my apartment, I don't feel comfortable having to use the toxic materials I would need to use with regular oil paints and its not big enough of a place to deal with the fumes.  I'm impressed though with how these oil paints work because they feel like normal oil paints and the water does work well.  The other plus is that washing my hands afterward is A LOT easier with this stuff.

I don't know how... archival it will be.  We'll see I guess. 

In the end though, I feel good.  The more comfortable I get with oils, the better I'll be able to move on to larger paintings and maybe do some projects I've wanted to do, but didn't think I could do.

Wis-ettes

So, I am tending to feel better about myself and my life.  I attribute this to a few things though I'm not going to go into some long winded story about it.  The effect of my mental state though, makes me feel like some new age preacher when I see people who are down or depressed or just thinking about a difficult choice.  I don't want to sound that way, but like anyone who has a break through or something that they feel has helped them, they want to share it with the world and make them see the light too.

Now, my life isn't perfect, but its getting better and I believe it will be good.  I know I have issues still and no, I'm not miss mary sunshine all the damn day.  But I feel hopeful and I think that's something. 

The past few days a few people have come to me speaking about being down or unhappy and I hear myself start dropping those 'pearls of wisdom'.  Today I realized, I'm only giving advice based on my small piece of life and calling it 'wisdom' seemed wrong.  I can't pass on my 'wisdom'... but I can pass on my 'wis-ettes' or little bits of wisdom.  ((I should note, the word 'wis-ette was born in a restaurant in NJ over roast beef sandwiches))  I only hope that my wis-ettes don't annoy the hell out of people.  I know that in my.... darker moments... people who tried to give me words of wisdom annoyed me because in my head it was just "It's not THAT simple you idiot!" or "Easy for YOU to say".  And that's right - its not that simple and it is easy for me to say... but yeah, I don't want to be some person that tells people, "Think happy thoughts and a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down." All I can give are my wis-ettes and hope it helps in some small way.

In more art related news, tomorrow I am going to start an experiment. It will be the first day of my Painting A Day trial.  I'll only be doing it for a week.  It would have been a month, but then I realized that I would be away next month visiting my brother and wouldn't be able to do it for the whole month!  And I would like to do this before I go to Balticon in May.  The plan for the week is for me to do, a painting a day.  I will be focusing on oil painting.  I don't think the paintings will all be full bang zoom paintings as I haven't really touched oils since college, but it is a good way for me to get into it again.

I will post the pictures each day and put them on here - I will also hopefully figure out how to do that.  *scratches head* I'm still not fully sure how this will work, but let's cross our fingers shall we?

A Beginning

I'll try to be brief and interesting but I promise neither.

I'm setting up this blog to start trying to be more in touch with people who are interested in finding out what is going on with me and what I'm doing day to day here in my corner of the world.  I'll try to keep this non-flaming, since, well, that just irritates the heck out of me.  

Some things I'll be trying to do in the future....

*WIP's - that's right, I'll be posting works-in-progress!  Most likely this will be oil paintings, watercolors or acrylics and not the fan art that I do for anime conventions.  The fan art goes quickly and I don't know how interesting those might be.  

*Convention reports - I might even give up-to-date reports at the cons themselves if the hotel has some internet access.  Why?  Because I like to encourage people's interest in conventions.  Besides, the more interest the more people will go and then... well... maybe... buy some art from me?  ..... ahem... moving along...

*Posting the sale of art - I have some plans for artwork in the coming week and will be posting art for sale here.  That is original work that may not be available at conventions or you might get it before it gets put up for auction.

*Where I'm at - I'll post about conventions I'm planning on attending so you know where I'll be planning on going.  I'll include links to the con sites so you can quickly find it and sign up if you'd like to go too.  

*Reviews of stuff - Movies, shows, books or comics... whatever.  I like to promote things that I think are good and encourage others to see it.

*Links - Links to other artists and sites that are interesting and fun.

There's more to come I suppose but those are some basics.  So welcome to the blog, pull up a chair, have a lovely cup of tea and some cookies and put your feet up!