One Suggestion for Conquering Procrastination

I'd like to say thank you for the really positive and encouraging feedback I received about Adam's portrait. On Facebook especially there were a lot of lovely comments and I noticed that many of them were from people who attended high school with Adam.

When I finish something I've been working on for a while, I find I often have to build up steam for the next project. It's not that I don't want to start something new, it's more like a latent sense of disbelief, as in, "Really? I get to start another painting and finish it?" Admittedly, it's a silly thought to have but on the other hand, it's a reassurance that making pictures hasn't become blase.  

As part of the process of getting geared up for starting something new, I was thinking about ways to encourage myself to get going and it occurred to me that one of the biggest things I can do is clean up my work space. Cleaning up seems to be a fairly common suggestion for improving work habits and is often connected to the adage that a cluttered space makes for a cluttered mind. Hogwash, I say! Personally, I don't buy that particular piece of folk wisdom because once my work space is clean and I'm working on something, the area very quickly becomes messy again and it doesn't stop me from optimizing my painting time (or if it does, I'm wonderfully oblivious).

So, why bother cleaning up my work space? Because otherwise organizing my desk becomes a prime source of procrastination. I tell myself that I'll start my next project after I clean up my work space. Once my desk is all cleaned up, I have nothing to stop me from starting that next painting. But until that time? Well, I can't start painting, my desk is too messy and now just isn't a good time to tidy up. Plus, the fact that I can't find the staple-gun that I need to attach the watercolour paper to the drawing board might also be a good reason to get organized.

Here's the preliminary watercolour of Cady the canine, and now that I've found my staple-gun, I can begin the final.

A Portait of and for Adam

Back in January I made mention of a project that I'd wanted to do for some time but had been putting off because it was hard. What made it hard was that it was a portrait of my friend, Adam, who passed away in 2008. I wanted to make the painting as a gift to his family but after a false start a while back I came to the conclusion I should just wait until the time felt right. Well, that time came and I was able to give the painting to Adam's family a few days ago. They were very happy to see it, which in turn made me feel happy. And that's all I'll say about that because I don't want to cry.

Something I really enjoyed about painting Adam's portrait was rendering his hair. I find painting or drawing hair is a little like doing a whole lot of mazes at once: you follow a strand or lock of hair through a tangle of other stands and locks to see where it ends up, and if you do that with enough pieces of hair, enough times, eventually you have a layered and hopefully three dimensional looking head of hair. In the photograph that I used, Adam's hair is such a beautiful rich colour that looking closely at it is rewarding because you start to see the incredible variety of hues and tones. I find photographing watercolour paintings really tricky because when I do it, the colouring and layering never quite comes out the same as in the original, but as I hope you can see, Adam had some seriously vibrant hair-- and for those who knew him, the personality to match.

Say it with Flowers

This afternoon the sun has been shining into my little studio space with such consistency and strength that I can almost believe there will be flowers sprouting up out of the ground in no time flat. But while I'm waiting, at least I can have some fun with flowers of the drawn and painted variety. A few years ago I worked out something of a botanical alphabet and while there's a bit of awkwardness involved with contorting plants to shape letters, I just can't help doing it anyway. The photographs you see below are of a thank you note I made today.

And now a little story about why I made a thank you card: I was recently sent a very lovely rejection letter from a local craftworks store. The kind letter writer informed me that their store hasn't had any luck with selling art gallery type work but I was given many good suggestion for other venues and organizations to approach. I guess I wasn't too surprised by the answer, I did apply to sell paintings at a craftstore after-all, but I thought I'd give it a try and now I've been happily reminded that not only does trying not hurt, it helps. You never know what you'll get out of doing something unless you give it a whirl (with the exception of things you just know you really shouldn't try--like slathering mustard all over a piece of pineapple). So my fun with flowers is a thank you note for the kind letter writer who gave me compliments and encouragement while saying no.

                                                                                                           

 

A furry friend of a friend

                                       

I thought the next image I'd share would be of the portrait I finished this past week, but I haven't had a chance to give the portrait to its intended recipients, so its electronic debut will have to wait.  This afternoon has been unusually quiet, and I really felt like doing some sketching to pass the time.

The little canine seen above is Cady, a friend's pet. Ever since my friend sent me some photographs of her dog, I've been thinking about doing a picture. When I have a painting in mind, I usually start with doing a few sketches in pen to see which image I'd like to turn into a more polished piece. I'm not sure which of Cady's poses I'll go with -- time to keep on drawing!

GOOOOOAL!!!

It feels a little late to put out a Happy New Year greeting, but I'm going to do it anyway: Happy New Year! It's still January at least.

As behooves this time of year, I've laid out some art related goals for 2011 and I'm happy to say that I'm actually in the process of accomplishing one of those goals. A very satisfying feeling. There's something that I'd wanted to paint for quite a while, but had previously avoided doing because the subject matter was hard. Not hard in the technical sense but more in terms of the psychological aspect. I'm not usually one for surprises but this is something that I'd like to share once it's completed. 

Which leaves me with the small difficulty of what image or images to share, since it's no fun to have an art blog without any visuals. To solve that problem, I'm going back in time and posting two illustrations I did when I was a student to accompany the story of Jack and the Bean Stock. This relates to what I'm writing about today because one of my goals for 2011 is to seriously entertain the possibility of doing children's book illustrations. And, yes, that's worded just ambiguously enough so as not to indenture myself too strongly. Goals are only fun if they don't turn into burdens. But of course they're also much more worthwhile if they don't transform into wishful thinking.

P.S. I've always found it helpful to work from source material so I was going to show the photograph of myself that I used as the basis for the ogre in the second illustration, but Doug suggested it was unwise. Chuckle, out of context (i.e. me pretending to be passed out at a table in order to supply photo reference for an ogre drawing) it does look pretty bad.

"Ducky!"

The duckling is finished! Or, more accurately, the water around the duckling is finished. The water is what seems to have taken the longest to do. It's been some time since I've done water but as it happens watercolour lends itself very well to the subject matter. Shocking, I know.

The challenge with painting the duckling's reflection was to blend the blue of the water into the yellow of the reflection without introducing any unwelcome green. Now as I look at the image on my computer monitor, the blue grey in the background seems to have picked up a greenish tinge, but I'm here to tell you I don't know where that came from because it's not in the original. I guess it's time to make better friends with the colour correction tool on photoshop.

I can't post a picture of this painting without mentioning that Clarence is in love with "ducky." While I was painting this, Clarence would shout "ducky, ducky" and then take his small stuffed animal duck and throw it at me over the baby fencing that protects my work space from his little grasp. Very cute. I'm going to send this watercolour out to have prints made, but after all of Clarence's enthusiasm for ducky, I think the little bird had better find his home in Clarence's room.

The Miscellaneous Portfolio

Now that I've participated in the last Holiday Makers' Market for 2010, I'm refocusing some energy on sprucing up the ol' website. As I've alluded to before, the technology side of things isn't my strong suit but I do find it helps to do computer related things at night. Daylight is for painting. Clarence has gotten back into monster naps, as I like to call any nap that goes beyond 1.5 hours, which has allowed me to get a fair bit of painting done during the day. So I suppose I can't begrudge the computer for keeping me from watching lousy sitcoms and reruns of design shows at night.

I'm finding the challenge with the website is how to organize the images, especially when there's a piece I'd like to show but not very many examples of that kind of work. Case in point is this oil painting I did about three years ago for the Dundas Valley School of Art Annual Auction. I did this from a photograph I took of the city as I looked out from the Wentworth stairs near Concession street.




I suppose one solution is to do more paintings in this style. I suppose that's one of the good things about art: you can always look forward to doing more.