Over the past few months, I have been applying to new jobs, studying for an exam, taking (and passing!) said exam, trying to create, study more, keep up with fitness, work, etc... And the cycle continues. As a result, it's been a while since I have posted anything here.
Most of that has to do with the fact that I am human and life happens. Time gets consumed with other activities. Luckily, some of that time has been spent trying to find my way once again as an illustrator. I would say about once or twice a year, I go through a strong phase of dislike. I will dislike my style, dislike watercolors, dislike my color palette, everything. And I will look at my website and close it immediately because I just can't stand to see it anymore.
I was having one of those moments (along with lots of other moments) at the end of 2015. I grew so much during the majority of that year in all ways possible (except physically, I am still short), and towards the end of the year, everything felt really stuck which resulted in a pause of activities. Especially with my work. But also during this time, I fell in love with the process of creation. I turned to my sketchbook more instead of my paints. I drew a lot. Fell in love again with my sketches and the way they looked. I find that falling in love with small projects is easy, but the way we are represented is through our portfolio and what's on our websites. It's a big stressful, actually. I just went through my website and deleted many many pieces, some of which I had truly loved while I was creating them. And yet, nothing lasts forever. Something that's hard to grasp if you're not an artist is the fact that artists are constantly defined by what they do. My portfolio is a representation of myself. When I view my work, I don't like to look at pieces I had done over a year ago, because I feel as if I grew from that. But to some, those pieces are lovely and wonderful and should never be removed. It's the opposite for the artist. Keeping old pieces as a part of a portfolio, I feel, pushes progress backwards. As I add new work, I'm constantly also facing old work that I may not feel an attachment to anymore. So, I removed a lot of pieces from my website. You will have an opportunity to see some of those old pieces again, but I will save that for another update.
I'm trying to focus on overall tone/mood in my pieces. I want to look at my artwork and see soft and desaturated color. I want it to feel calm. Art right now is a way for me to really relax, especially with the stress in my life, and I want that to show in the overall feel of my work. I don't really know for sure what everyone feels when they look at my work, but for me, working in blues and greys makes me feel calm and secure in what I do.
So you will see more of that when viewing my page.
Now for some photos, yes?
First off, I am offering prints of these sketches for a limited time on my etsy. Moving forward, I will be removing them and no longer be using etsy as a platform to sell my work, but I will post about that in the future.
Second, I recently had an illustration featured at the Attleboro Arts Museum as a part of their flower show last weekend! It was a ton of fun and a beautiful show to be a part of. One of the options was to draw an extinct species, and almost immediately after reading that, I started planning thumbnails for some ammonites.
I decided to have some fun with my thumbnails. I usually draw everything out on tracing paper, but for some reason I also wanted to embroider the tracing paper to illustration paper just for fun!
Out of these thumbails, I picked my final composition and went about painting the layers of the chambers. No matter how small the ammonite painting, I tend to do about three layers of separate mixed colors to add depth. In life, they have multitudes of layers with their color, and I try to exhibit that in my paintings. I painted the second pair of ammonites I ever bought, a species of Desmoceras from Madagascar.
I connect with the ammonites for many personal reasons, but one of the most obvious (specifically in the ammonite pairs) is the fact that they are both part of a whole. Being a gemini, I am naturally attracted to pairs of objects that relate to one another.
The painting was done at a standard size for framing purposes. And here's what they looked like on the wall!
I felt so happy to be a part of this exhibit.
Other than working on that piece, as I said earlier, I have been very absorbed in my sketchbook. My website is fully updated with photos if you're curious, and they can be viewed here in the sketchbook tab! There are also some new paintings added that I have not posted to this blog before, so take a look! For my most frequent updates, keeping up with my instagram is best at this moment in time. I currently cannot connect my DSLR to my laptop (I am in need of a new laptop), so right now it is the quickest and easiest way to get my art out there. I love updating this blog but I like to take nice quality photos for it when I can, and unfortunately that's not an option at this time.
I think this is where I will end the post for now! It's getting late for me and I do need to work in the morning.
Thank you always for reading!
No comments:
Post a Comment