The Wayfaring Wordhack

Yes, I'm still working on my donkeys. I've been blindsided, sideswiped, rear-ended, and run over by Fatigue, Personal Sick, and Family Sick, and so had no time or energy for art. I've been concentrating on writing since the beginning of the month, but I finally had the inspiration to do my "last" donkey.  Not last because I'm giving up but because I'm not going to experiment with other styles.*

Instead, the remaining 15 days** of my challenge will be spent developing 3-4 of my (and Julien's) favorites, so I can see how they look as more complete works. I'll also see if I enjoy the amount and type of effort involved.

But before that, I give you a donkey inspired by Madhubani (or Mithila) Indian folk art. The other day, I saw a couple of works in this style at an expo, and it reminded me that I wanted to try another folksy type donkey. I did this in sepia ink (forgot to change the settings and scanned it as a "Black & White Document"), but I haven't ruled out using color. I actually wanted to do it with illustration markers. Only I have no illustration markers and--see second sentence of this post--have not been out to buy any, despite my best intentions to the contrary.

We've been having rolling blackouts almost every night, and because I can't seem to get my act together and do my illustrations during the day, I haven't had the will or energy to do them when the power finally comes back on. Good thing I am not doing a 30 Consecutive Days of Donkeys Challenge. :P

Tonight I decided to sketch by the light of a headlamp. The electricity came back just now, at 10 p.m., and I don't feel like doing another version.


 

The scanner cut off all the edges on this one, including the donkey's hooves; my paper is too large. But the hour is late and I don't want to photograph it.

So.  Since I disliked yesterday's donkey so much, what did I decide to do today's in? Pastels, a medium which you all now know I'm not at all comfortable with. Yeah, glutton for punishment.

Julien and I were talking last night about how difficult it is to post things I am unhappy with. With a few of these donkeys, I've wanted nothing more than to chuck them in the trash, but I've gone ahead and shared anyway. That is part of the challenge: getting over myself a bit.  And as I explained to J, even if I don't much care for the finished illustration, it is the experimenting, the working through something new and thus-far unthought of, that is more important to me right now than a pretty or well-executed work of art.

As I've read somewhere else, it is process not product.

What is that saying about hell and good intentions? I think I added a few paving stones today. :P

Oh well, I did do the donkey part of my illustration. I just didn't get in the other details I wanted to include. You can see on the bottom that I was going to put in the eponymous slippers from the story (and the baby wearing them, too, which was visible before I cropped the image), but the day had other plans. Days of mine (yours, too?) have a way of taking over like that.

Yet another long day. A get-together that was supposed to last 2.5 hrs tops ran to 5 hrs, so I felt a bit rushed with this one.  I wasn't even intending to do another watercolor today but didn't have time for my other idea. I also changed my mind midway through about how I wanted to do the sky, which resulted in a mess. Oh, well; it's a draft, just a draft. If I do go with fanciful, stylized imagery, I'm going to have to think long and hard about how much "busyness" I want and where I want said busyness.

It's funny. I wasn't intending to do a white donkey, but the trees (and the sky) got so busy (hence the busyness comment above) that I thought simple was the way to go with my donkey of the day.

Behold! A serious draft!

As you will have noticed, I haven't been worried about composition and such since embarking on this challenge, but I have tried to turn in "clean"(-ish) versions of my ideas. Not so today. You are getting a drawing with ink smudges and blah bits and all. And that's ok. This is very much a draft stage, and I need to get that through my head so that I'm not spending so much time on these illustrations.

I think to do an ink drawing justice and give it a chance to convince me, I should have paid more attention to composition, but doing the sketch on this buff paper lets me see that I would definitely want more touches of color, more in line with yesterday's offering. I seem to be leaning toward mixed media for the moment...

One of these days, I will learn to draw with pastels. It will not be during my donkey challenge, however. Back in 1998 (yes, I remember the date), I bought a set of chalk pastels without ever having tried my hand at them. Most of the pastel sticks are now broken but barely used. It is just not a medium I really enjoy. I don't even know if I could learn to like it. Maybe one of these days, I won't learn!

Nevertheless, I listened to some strange urge to dust them off and try them again for today's donkey.  I seriously almost threw my effort in the trash,* but this exercise is not about posting pretty (or even successful attempts at) art. It is about trying different things, seeing which ones fit...

So, goal accomplished.

Once upon a time, I wrote down a children's story for J.

Once upon a time, I told him I would have that story illustrated by the end of 2012 (after promising spring of 2012 :-< ).

Time and again, I have failed to keep my promises because I have never hit upon an illustrative style that pleases me for the narrative. This is due to the fact that I have so far only done random little sketches.

Obviously it isn't by doing halfhearted once-in-a-while sketches that I am going to find a style that suits. Enter: 30 Days of Donkeys.  One of the first "images" that occurred to me in relation to this story was a donkey wearing mittens on its ears, so I am going to use Donkey as my muse. For the next 30 days, I will be doing one (or more if I have an idea that fires me up) donkey illustration per day in hopes that I shall, at last, home in on the type of art I want to do.

EEK! Forgot yesterday was Sunday.  Thanks mindseas for putting up your snippet and reminding me to post, albeit a day late. I have a good excuse for not being online yesterday, but that will be another post, perhaps tomorrow.

In the meantime, a snippet from what I've been working on this week. Not Witherwilds, but a children's story that I promised Julien I would finish before year's end.  I've got the story almost hammered out. Then it will be time for illustrations.


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