Staying True

One thing that is really hitting home in taking Kelly Rae Roberts' course is her message: stay true to yourself when setting up your creative business and when making your art. There are so many ways to do things...so much inspiration out there...and so many helpful tutorials and articles on "how to" do things that it can all get overwhelming. And then you start to second guess...everything. Am I doing it right? Am I doing anything worth doing? WHAT am I doing? On and on it goes.

I've kind of hit that wall a little bit. I'm so thankful for the information and the resources that Kelly is sharing in her course. They will be invaluable in the weeks to come as I sort it all out. But I had to take a breather and just re-evaluate what it is I am wanting to do exactly. I'm not alone in this dilemma; I've seen others in the class asking the same questions. We're all just trying to make sense of it all and find our own paths. It's all exciting and the possibilities are endless, but you do have to start narrowing down where you want your focus to go!

I tend to be all over the place when it comes to my art. One week I'll really be into painting, then I'll switch to drawing and colored pencils or watercolors, then I'll do some mixed media on a canvas, then I may want to play with encaustics. You get the idea. But regardless of what medium I choose to work in, I have my own ideas on how I want my piece to look and I know a lot of times it's not what is probably considered "correct". Hubby always comments on my girls that I draw: "I like her but her neck is so long". Yes! I want to draw long necks. Maybe I'll stop at some point but right now I want to keep it up. It makes me happy. And happy Pam is creative Pam! :)

So I'm mulling all of this over and still trying to get some art made in the meantime. I started Sharon Tomlinson's class on painting faces in Technicolor. I must say it is a challenge. I don't paint faces too often. I love to draw them and color them with colored pencils and inks. But paint and me...it's definitely a steep learning curve. I'm on the verge of pitching the first canvas. I have so many layers on the poor face it's sad. But it's my first time actually painting a face on a canvas with acrylics. I've attempted faces with watercolors or painting on watercolor paper, which for some reason was a little easier than painting on the canvas.

Sharon had us sketch three versions of the same model. We were to find our own model. Of course with my abundance of fashion magazines laying around I had no trouble with that. We have three different canvases to paint so I have two more fresh ones waiting to start. These are small (6" x 9" canvas boards) so no big loss if I have to trash them. I'm going to persevere one more day with this first one and then call it a "warm up exercise" and start another one. But I want to wait for her next lesson to see what new things she introduces before I tackle the next canvas. I'm glad I saved my favorite sketch on canvas for a later lesson.

Last night I sketched a face in a little 3" x 5" sketch notebook and colored it with my pencils. This is kind of the idea we are going for with the technicolor look on canvas. It's so much easier with the pencils! I scanned her into Photoshop and put her into this digital collage but I wanted you to see the colors that I'm trying to get with the paints. By the way, the sketch is mine but the elements are from Tangi Baxter at Scrapbook Graphics. She is my favorite digital designer. I just lover her style! Now I'm going back to that darn canvas and try again...

A Little Magic

Things behind the scenes are moving along a little slower than I had planned. But I am making progress. I've had some family in for a visit and hubby had some trips out of town. Life just gets in the way sometimes and you have to stop and make time for family. This week, I hope, things have settled down and the real fun will begin. There shouldn't be any interruptions and I think I'll actually have an entire week to experiment with my new ventures.

I've been making new batches of CitraSolv papers and having great results with those. I've found with the terrible heat and humidity that the pages are easier to make if you do a few at a time rather than a whole stack at once. This was something that I didn't have much luck with in the Winter! But it's so much quicker and pretty much instantaneous with this Summer weather. I've got big plans for these papers and I'll show you a peek of that project later this week.

Some things that I had really planned on trying out by now had to be put on hold because the product I needed was back ordered for over a month. :( Can't be helped when you are at the mercy of online suppliers. Oh well, it's here now and I can finally get busy with it. :)

So, a little magic can start to happen this week (at least I hope so). I am excited to try these new techniques I've been reading and studying about. This whole thing is a new art form for me and will be just one big experiment. But you never know what can happen until you try. For the photo at the top of this post, I decided to use one of my recent sketches in a digital piece I put together. I added some magical bits and hope she can bring me some inspiration as I head into the week!

And I'm still loving Kelly Rae Roberts' ecourse. There is so much material that she is sharing with us on starting your own art business. It's a lot to take in but all of this will gel and begin to take form as I sort through it all. You may see some changes to the blog here and there as I learn how to tweak it and start to delve into the tech stuff. But I'm mainly in the information gathering stage right now and I know I can at least handle that much. ;)

So this week I'm looking forward to no interruptions and long hours playing in the studio! And, hopefully a few surprises to show very soon! And if not finished works, at least I hope to show some works-in-progress.