Saturday, December 30, 2017

Progress of an Artist

Okay, so before the year is over I do have some art to share. Today I went back over the entries I've done in this blog and I noticed that I skip many pieces of art that I do without ever posting them on here. I've never had a New Year's resolution before, but I'll make an exception this year and hope that next year I will do a better job at keeping my blog updated with my art as I continue to create new pieces.

About a week or two ago I had a conversation with my friend who is very integral to the support system of my pursuit of a career as an illustrator/artist. He has been immensely encouraging and he asked me "why is it that you work on so many projects that are indirect to your attaining a job as an illustrator instead of just getting to the part where you actually just sit down and illustrate a story so you have that for your portfolio?" About two days later my mom asked me the exact same thing, only in much more urgent tones.

I had the same answer for both of them. I work on all these other projects because I feel that they will lead me to a better developed artistic style and mastery of technique. They help me practice concept development slowly. Rather than forcing myself to work on a story and be inspired by the same set of characters for an extended period of time, I am training myself to be inspired constantly but instead of being limited by a storyline, I am only limited by a set of parameters much wider so as to train my brain to create images without overloading it with too many limitations at once.

I think back on the summer I interned at some Stop Motion Animation studios. All the people that I did end up getting close to who gave me a small window into their perception of their job basically told me that because they're working on a collaborative project that is not their own, they feel constricted artistically within their job and prefer to work in lower stress studios where they have ample personal time to create their own personal projects at home so as to have artistic freedom and expression of their own.

I think that experience and knowledge has led me to almost fear being trapped in such a job. An illustration job where I feel trapped by someone else's imagination. It's like that compass in one of the Pirate of the Caribbean movies. It only takes you where you want to go, but it can only do it when you know EXACTLY where that is. Right now I'm in a state where I'm not certain of what exactly I want to achieve as an artist, and maybe I'll never find out and continue to work on my own projects occasionally selling something here and there. Which would be fine. But I hope that my vision will crystalize and take me to an end game, a new beginning of a career that I will love.

This Christmas I worked on some ornaments for my family to give as gifts. I'm going to post one a day so as to not visually overload my post. The one below is an image that I did not create myself, I must admit. I really like ships but I'm not very savvy in drawing them yet, so I looked onto the cover of a book I am currently reading, We the Drowned. This exact image is on the cover of the book and I really liked it, so I simply copied it. This is one of the baby steps I sometimes take to learn to draw something new. I copy it. After copying enough of the same thing I begin to get a better sense of my own take on the object of my art and while I may use references from photos, I still create my own image. Not this time though. Although I did use gold leaf, and that was not part of the book cover, which was black and white.

 




Thursday, December 7, 2017

Pirates!

Life has had many changes in the past 5 months since I've been back from Russia. I got pregnant and found out recently that I'm going to have a son. My husband and I did our first gig together at the Dusty Monk playing as the Gipsy Pirate Octopi after planning on it basically since the month we met.    We had an art show with some of the Citizens Warehouse artists. And of course other life things happened in between those events.

About three months ago I started painting a very special painting for a friend who was gracious enough to offer to use his beautiful home to host our wedding. I promised him a matryoshka of himself in March of this year as a thank you for hosting. But as I continued to make matryoshka of other friends and family, my paintings became gradually larger and more and more complex.

Originally I started painting small pieces, just 4 x 4 inches, with only one central figure and some ornate folk designs.

This was the first first in the series, 4x4"

After doing a few more I ran out of the small scraps of watercolor paper I was working with and found a larger piece of watercolor scrap paper and immediately I added architecture because there was space for it.

This was the 6th in the series. 6.5x7"

But this was the only scrap of watercolor paper I had in that size, so the next painting I did had to be on a larger sheet from a pad. I did three at 12x16" and each time they seemed to be more time consuming.

This was 9th in the series. 12x16"

When I came around to painting the gift I promised to Chris Stamos I wanted outdo myself. Partially because I wanted to show him my gratitude because I love my husband very much and our wedding was so beautiful and all things related to it I want to be beautiful, including the gift that I give to our friend for opening up his home to our celebration. Also, after seeing what I can do in the painting above I wanted to do something even better, I want to evolve as an artist, even if I am doing Matryoshkas, I want each one to be better than the next. 

I worked intermittently because so many things were happening, I was already in my first trimester and it proved very difficult to work on anything during that time as I wanted to sleep most of the time. Also, I had to spend quite a bit of time rehearsing with Tony and practicing the accordion on my own as well. But finally I finished my latest masterpiece!

10th in the series, 15x20"