Close, but no cigar...

I work very hard when depicting the animals to keep their essence and shy away from anthropomorphizing them into Hallmark card cuteness.  Just couldn't do it with this creature.  And I am far from satisfied with her even now, just tired of smearing pastels around for a while.  It is the ultimate ennui of artists when their vision does not materialize on the paper or canvas.  Sometimes it is something better, something magical.  Often it is not.  Whatever.  Every piece teaches me something I need to know about this craft.  I think this one taught me to focus better on the subject.  Head was too big, eyes too far apart, body to thick.  AAAAARRRRGGHH!  Still, it was fun.  Now to put her away, start something new, with lessons tucked into my pocket for future reference.

Back in the saddle again...

Sometimes I go on an artist hiatus.  I never really plan to do this.  It just sort of happens, and I look up and say, jeez, I haven't painted in so long.  And I wonder if I can still do it.  My walls are laden with my work.  Surely that should stand as incontravertible proof that I can.  And it doesn't because I forget the experience of the painting, and no amount of framed oeuvres are going to convince me.  It takes getting out the pastels, taping the Tiziano paper to a board, choosing an image, and beginning.  And then, there it is, again.  Most of what I hoped to get is there, on the paper.  It is an amazing thing, over and over again.  God I love doing this.  

Everything is surreal, part IV

Well, I am listening to Mahler.  Even I am impressed.  I have successfully poopooed him all my 70 years, but I decided that if I am going to be an art music afficionado, I need to broaden my taste.  So I ordered a set of all the symphonies minus one.  I guess he wrote on stinker in ten.  Pretty good batting average, Gustav.  And in spite of some rather abrupt volume shifts, I find his music really romantic.  If he hadn't written such looooooonnnnnng works, longer than the staying power of the average human bladder, he might actually be popular.  Or maybe he is, and I just didn't know it.  Nevertheless, here I am, steeped in culture.  Other jarring things happened today, too.  Big bang not too long ago announce yet another collision on the very busy cross-street to my halcyon little neighborhood.  I trooped down to get a gander.  Sweet little old lady was being trundled away in the ambulance.  Little dear was just planning on some shopping at the market, and out of nowhere, a pickup slammed into her.  There are a couple of these dustups a year.  I am really careful when turning out of my country lane onto this thoroughfare.  It is a war zone.  And then, oh, this is the worst.  My favorite character on Days of Our Lives got snuffed out.  Just like that.  No warning, and really, folks, this is just too much.  I have been watching faithfully since 1997.  I am breaking up with you!  No more DVRed episodes to faithfully attend to.  Done. 

Watercolors, bah...

I think I suck at watercolors.  Part of the reason is that I work very fast and don't pay enough attention to what is happening on the surface and they freaking run around with a mind of their own.  They just won't behave like oil or acrylic will.  So, impatience, number one artistic character defect.  Sometimes, though, something interesting happens all by itself.  It could be some colors that meld together, or a tiny detail that didn't get smeared around.  I pulled out a stack (one of many) of watercolors I did in a class a couple of years ago and gave them the test; what would they be if I framed them.  Amazing things happen when I put a mat around a painting.  Doesn't matter if I like the painting or think it worthy of framing.  It's like putting a bum in a tuxedo.  Suddenly, wow, it looks so, well, legitimate!  I am of the mind that an audacious artist could put a mat around anything, slap it on a wall, and somebody would think it is art, fall in love with it, and buy it, even at the slightly inflated price I put on my art, because if I don't value it, no one will.  In fact, I think you must love a piece of art to purchase it, and that should be a tiny sacrifice.  Then the artwork will be the balm for that little wound in your bank balance.  Newest thoughts from an admittedly insecure, neurotic artist.

The thing about blue and white shirts...

My favorite blue and white shirt got a hole in it.  Not a smallish hole that one could stitch up on the inside with just the faintest pucker to attest to its existence.  Oh, nonono.  A great honking hole that would showcase my admittedly more evident than usual collar bone.  The rest of the shirt is likewise as fragile and thin from multitudeness wearings and washings, a couple of decades of love.  What is more appropriate as a blue and white shirt for a trip to the Cafe for a non-fat latte and cinnamon walnut croissant on a Sunday morning?  There was a time when I had to be trained to change out of my workaday outfit every night when I came home.  Now I live in those comfy, roomy garments that are soft and well-loved.  I missed my blue and white shirt.  Actually, I still have it, on a  special hook in the itsy bitsy closet, where I can adore it on occasion.  And, blasphemies of blasphemies, I replace it.  My new blue and white shirt is not striped, that would be like buying a puppy just like Boo and hoping for the same dog to show up.  No, my new blue and white goto shirt is blue with tiny nosegays of white flowers in between very discreet polka dots.  It, too is soft, already, and worthy of having croissant crumbs caught in its cuffs.  God bless Anthropologie.