An Art Date

[wayfaringwordhack]

Had an art date with H today, in which there was no art.  But!  There was goal setting and just overall nice conversation while her husband took our kids to a nearby park.  H and I decided to set goals to achieve within the next three months; but for the most part, I want to get my stated stuff done by year's end.  If I don't, no biggie, of course, because we are going for a three-month stretch.  I want to see if I *can* accomplish things by certain dates to judge how much, if at all, I struggle with the time frame and so forth.

So, I came away from the date with the following goals, divided into three creative areas (I should have put "finish cardigan" in there :P ).

Fiction:
Write three chapters of TKB by Dec 31

Writing and Illustration:

- Find photos (online) of 5 people to use as inspiration and paint them in an illustrative style for children's book in prep for the character design workshop on Dec 12.

- make a blank  insta-book ('zine) for our trip this month in which I can do travel-inspired sketches in.  My goal is to make one, but I think I would like to do two: One with plain white paper and another with different colored backgrounds/underpaintings (probably gouache) that I can sketch or paint on if so inspired by color, mood, etc on location. (This is going to happen around 19-27 Nov)

Fine Art:

I would like to work on art in general as well as illustration, and to that end, I aim to make three landscape paintings (small, and on paper if I so desire) before Jan 31. My end goal is not to have something to hang on our walls, but I would like if I made something I was happy to display.

When I got home, I did some character research and then started on a landscape exercise (acrylic on toned paper with a red underpainting).  I hope to finish it up tomorrow, but here is what I got done tonight.  

 

Acrylic is not easy to photograph, and of course, I have the added difficulty of taking a pic at night AND having a crappy phone camera.  You can squint and imagine it is focused. :P  This is from a photo taken at the park where L and kids went to play today.  They stayed at the playground this time, but we usually take the path featured above to a stream where the kids like to build forts and catch crabs and newts and toads, oh my!

Comments

[mallorys_camera]

Love it X 100! 😀

[wayfaringwordhack]

Thanks. :)

It was fun to do, and that is encouraging.

[asakiyume]

You get a terrifying amount of creative work done. I stand in awe!

The painting is beautiful--I love the shadows in the leaves, the dark patches.

[wayfaringwordhack]

You get a terrifying amount of creative work done.

I think it only looks that way from the outside. ;)

Thanks for the compliment. I too really enjoy the contrast and am trying to really incorporate that to give my art more drama.

[asakiyume]

I think it only looks that way from the outside. --Okay, fair, but counterpoint: the sense of nagging lack of accomplishment that you have perhaps bears no resemblance to what the world considers an impressive amount of accomplishment! ... Which I admit has nothing to do with whether you're satisfied with the stuff you've made--that's a whole nother thing--but still: you wrested this time from a demanding world and made some things. That's impressive.

[asakiyume]

(And you're welcome ^_^ I love shadows and depths like that in real life, and I love seeing them in paintings)