Week of October 2nd

This week was about diving in. I’ve been making most of my watercolor paintings on mid paper. I’ve had this giant sheet of beautiful, thick, sturdy, cotton-infused paper in my studio for a very long time, but I’ve avoided painting on it because it’s expensive and then I put all this pressure on myself to make a good painting so that I don’t waste the fancy paper. When you paint on okay, kind of good paper there’s no risk. There’s a whole pad in front of you so you are free to mess up all you want.

But what we are talking about here is fear and if you let fear creep into your art-making then you are doomed. Gotta shake that stuff off and just dive right in.

Monday

Here are some of cut out bits from paintings where the rest of it just wasn’t working.

Tuesday

These were some of the first marks on the fancy paper. And a hand shadow. It’s a painting shadow creature I think.

This is a little painting of moss and summer garden leaves that I keep thinking isn’t finished, but I think I might have finally finished it. I like how it looked ontop of this big paper thing I’m working on.

Wednesday

There she is, the big beautiful paper, and look I’m not scared anymore! I’m painting away!

Thursday

Friday

Some big paper closeups.

Sunday

I’ve been sketching in pencil lately. I was inspired by a show where the artists could only use a 6H pencil to make their drawings. They were all given the same-sized paper and had to use that piece of paper. It was amazing to see how much variety could come out of a freaking 6H pencil. I prefer the B range, but that’s just me.

Then I was inspired by my drawing and started to use features from the drawing to incorporate pencil into a watercolor painting.