Sketches, scribbles and swooshes of colour

This has been a 2D week. Started a couple more paintings; playing with colour mixes and making some nice background stuff, but now they need something to bring the whole piece together.

Also done a whole bunch of illustrations – just playing again, with dance based outline images and testing out various alternatives to brushes (yes, I’ll post some in progress images). This is quite fun. Hmm, if I dipped this item into paint, what line would it make? How much control do I have directionally? How does it deposit paint on the surface? How soon does the paint fade out? What textures can it do?

If I changed the media then what sort of images work best? Pastels invite much broader, sweeping movements and I can add layers of colour and texture, soften an outline or sharpen it up with a bit of charcoal.

Inks – god I love the colours of inks (especially the newer stuff which comes in metallic and pearlescent options) and I have a number of bottles that I’ve kept for years, but I’ve banned myself from buying anymore until I know how I want to use them! Have had to toss out ancient bottles which have solidified and refuse to reliquidise (is that a word?) and are so hard I can’t even grind them up to powder.

Anyhow, regardless of what I’m using, the goal is to create a consistent way of depicting figures in various poses which are fluid and work from all angles. It’s trickier than it sounds as I want to move away from the photographic style work that I started out with and I have to train my mind to see in a different way.

This is a much simpler style. Side views are easier but front needs a bit more thought. Also, there’s a challenge to get the arms to be expressive without needing to add too many lines and to show the leg lines but again, deciding how much line to apply needs some experimentation. And the guys need representing too. Different requirements again, especially for gymnasts – these need a more substantial look. There’ll be colour added as well which is a whole other aspect to design in to them to create a complete piece of work. I’m really enjoying having a variety of things to work on.

I haven’t done anymore thinking on the Instagram thing. But I think I’ll probably end up doing it anyway. That’s probably for this long weekend; to research how it works and what the etiquette is! I also have to sort out my business card design – it’s ridiculous that I’ve never got round to that but to be fair, I wanted them to match the website and it’s had a few restyles and now has a different font too. Achh, I should just pick something and get a few printed. I over think things but that’s my tick-every-box admin background showing through.

Yet another thing to do is work on some new faces for sculptures. Think I want to up the size to what they were when I was using polymer clay. I can do very small heads but adding features is way too much time and fiddle with such small proportions. It’s masochistic to do for each piece and I don’t think it’s a good time investment. A slightly more generous size will also allow more expressiveness to hands.

That’s quite a bit to be going on with but I think mixing up what I do will keep a range of ideas coming, stimulate more creative ways to approach things and keeps it all fresh for me. As an artist (or anyone in a creative field), if you stick to just the same thing in the same style all the time you can get bored with your own output; there has to be progression and development. There is always something new to be discovered.