My Art Journey Lives to See Another Day!

If you have been following my blog, my last post left you wondering whether I gave up on the world of art or not. If you haven't been following, basically I made a mess of my third painting and was wondering if I really had what it took to paint. I decided to push on. I am new. I don't have a painting style or technique down yet. I joined an art community and they informed me that if I don't like a painting, I can just gesso over it and start again. Gesso, yet another new art instrument I learnt about on this journey. It is basically a paint-like substance used to prime or prepare a surface for painting.

The community also reassured me that they produce duds too, and that it was ok to fail sometimes. I felt a little better but it would be a few weeks before I got the confidence to paint again. During those weeks, I surfed through the community, looking at painting by others. Some of the paintings intimidated me. Thoughts of, I would never be that good entered my mind, but I tried my best to brush them off. During those weeks, I looked at paintings done by my fellow artists and tried to learn as much as I could.

My friend's birthday came up and I decided I wanted to do a painting for her and all of a sudden, my drive came back. From the moment I prepped my canvas from white to black, all I felt was happiness. I was content and relaxed while painting. My anxiety went out the window. My friend loves The Nightmare before Christmas, so I painted Jack and Sally for her. Jack was a breeze to paint. Sally was a little bit harder. At first I couldn't get her face to look quite right, but then I told myself get out of your head. You "paint" your own face with makeup all time, so just do the opposite of what you usually do because Sally has dark circles. Once I envisioned how I did my makeup, it suddenly became easier. Sometimes technique can just be lying dormant inside you all along. So lesson learnt, the journey won't always be easy, but eventually I will get it.

So how am I faring today? I am struggling with some flowers on the painting I am currently working on, but I am happy to report that I am not giving up. I just took a break and will get back to it tomorrow.

Comments

Easy Peasy Little Elephant Painting

I am currently working on my first still life. I am only part way through the process as you can see from the pic. The flowers I am working on are a far bigger challenge than I thought they would be. From the Sherpa's lessons, I think the problem is more with my brushes than it is with me. My brushes are super soft, soft enough to put makeup on my face. In the art world you want the opposite. You want a brush that feels uncomfortable on your skin. My strokes are just not turning out right, but I said on my previous post, I do not let this deter me. I decided to take a small break from this project however and do something a little more whimsical instead. I chose an easy peasy, cute, little elephant to paint. The fact that I called this easy peasy is astonishing to me, as just two months ago I would have said this was far too hard to paint. My confidence is growing. Still, I can never get enough practice, especially this early on in the game. Even something as easy as th...

My Latest Painting, Coke Zero and Chris Pine

So what does Chris Pine have to do with my latest painting you ask? Absolutely nothing. But I have been pining for him for over a decade, so just thought that I would put that out there to the one, or two, or zero persons reading my blog. I am also a Coke Zero addict. Yet another useless fact that you didn't really need to know about me. So I painted this one a few weeks ago and have been meaning to post it, but I have been extra busy with my real life job, so I haven't really done anything art related after that...Well unless you count looking at other people's art. Oh, and I took a few selfies and uploaded them to the Prisma Art app. That counts right? I know, I know, very sad, Risa. But also they look so cool that I decided to continue with my current streak of oversharing today and I am going to post one up at the end of the blog entry. :D And before I lose you with my feeble attempt at humour, what did I actually I learnt from painting this? I learnt that ...

Lonely Girl In Paris - My Second Painting

As my journey continues as someone new to the world of art, I give you my second attempt at a painting. This one upped the ante a little bit from my first. Clouds were considerably harder to do than the abstract looking buildings in my previous one. The girl in this one was slightly trickier to pull off than the first. It is far, far from perfect, but when something is your baby you tend to love it anyway and this one is still my favorite to date. My technique is starting to improve a bit, even this early on. I learnt all about glazing mediums; something I had no idea existed before today. Acrylic paints tend to dry out quickly. A glazing medium helps with this and it also helps to thin out your paint a little too. Think of dipping your paint brush in water and then picking up your paint. Sometimes your brush gets too wet and paint leaks all over the canvas or sometimes your brush isn't wet enough and you end up depositing too thick a layer of paint on the canvas. A glazing m...

Risa's Art Journey - The Woman Who Never Painted Before

Search This Blog