01.16.09
Moving forward
wash draft of a current sketch
It only took six weeks of “The Shining”-like isolation upstate to not only get me off my ass and start running and eating right again but actually getting over myself and picking up a pencil and watercolors again. I have a whole drawer of supplies that have been languishing and only being slightly molested at various times. I’d finger the paints and stroke the brushes and then “a-hmm” myself and slide the drawer shut again. What finally did it for me this time was the sheer volume of pictures I’ve been cutting out, downloading, and organizing. I can only tell myself “oh, I should paint that” so many times before it is time to shit or get off the pot.
These options are never the ones I’m aggressive towards.
And yet, for whatever reason, I’ve done it. I’ve worked on two pretty solid sketches and started putting on washes. Neither of which I think are anything other than just nice pieces of practice for me to learn the tools and try to understand how the medium works. Anything that is even remotely recognizable is nothing more than a happy accident.
True to my nature, I like neither of them. I like the idea of them and I like that I’ve actually shat as it were, but I see so much wrong and so much left to do which is typically discouraging for me. But I’m still moving forward with them and then I’ll move onto others and keep the dull roar of all that I have yet to learn to myself. And yet…I do like the idea of them. It makes me feel…attached.
January 18, 2009 at 8:29 pm
It’s gorgeous. Makes me think of the Ponte Sant’Angelo.