Caught up in the struggle

first night, foundation work

I had it.  Or I was on the edge of it.  I was carving out the image, making bold choices, building something where one choice would dovetail into the next and it was all coming together.  Then I stopped for the night and totally lost my momentum.  The next night I was fighting with myself second guessing and trying to get back to where I'd been headed.  Ah well.  The mojo, she has left me.  I'll keep working on it, slower now trying to find that sweet spot. 

second night, argh

In the meantime, great opportunity to switch focus and tackle the writing with a little more determination.  Funny enough I met with a good friend the other day and she asked me what my ultimate goal was.  And though I have a lot of things I want to be able to do, getting this dang book published is at the core of it all. 

So why the heck am I out in the garage whacking away at these canvases if being an author is a serious goal?  Good question. 

I mean, painting is certainly more immediate.  It's the same problem solving but all in one place and it has a definite end, whereas the writing is more murky.  But maybe it's that cliche stuff like being afraid of finishing the book and failing at having it published.  Eh.  Who knows.  I just need to be more disciplined in doing each thing every, or every other day.  These painting binges can be exhausting and the writing really suffers from the stop and go.  So, steady.  That's my new mantra.  Each day, making progress with each.  This is quite the internally directed babble, but there you have it. 

Lat cow painting

When the mojo goes away I get all introspective.  But enough of that I have a book to write.  Scene 1 Chapter 4 and Go.

Holy Canoli

I'm on fire painting wise.  Each and every painting I enter into lately I feel like I'm learning in leaps and bounds.  The only hang up I'll have is when I stop for the night and enter back into the image.  It loses some of the spontaneity and if I'm not careful I find myself just picking away at it rather than making bold choices. 

Tonight I finished up another cow painting.  It was in a dead spot and though the image read okay, there wasn't any love to it.  So I went in and made some high contrast changes.  Shadows that had been in a place holder sort of a state while I worked out the value got loaded with deep rich colors.  I'll post pics tomorrow on that one.  Then using only one large brush I blocked in a portrait of Tully.

Now as you may or may not know, portraits were a sticking point for me for a long time.  Never mind how difficult they can be, but since my mom was so good at them, they intimidated me.  That's part of why I'm so excited about my progress tonight because none of that was happening.  My friend Jeremy inspired this painting.  He's been doing an incredible series of paintings.  Each one is a new take on, or version of a John Singer Sargeant woman.  All women.  I had been toying with the idea of taking a photo of a little woman, in a Sargeant like pose and sending it to him to see if he'd be interested in tackling it. 


First I found this photo of a young girl

Then I took some shots of Tully in a similar pose.

Then I fell in love with the image and blocked it in and had a blast working my way through it.  It's far from perfect but I'm learning a ton by working this way.  Fast and focused with no diddling around on small details.  Argh yummy yummy paint.  So satisfying.  Pictures of my work tomorrow.

And now before the coffee wears off I'm going to tackle writing.  I've pushed past whatever block I had going on before and now I just need to keep up with myself.