My Creative Journey 30 + Watch me Paint! Ep. 12

Wow...I'd forgotten what exhaustion feels like. I think the last time I was this drained was back when I was in college and a horse busted my leg. I refused to take time off from the camp...until I started falling asleep standing up as my body fought to heal. This time I think it's because I've been burning the candle at both ends for too long and not giving myself a break. As-is, I'm using the last bits of my energy to put this together before I pass out in the back of my car before driving home, and well, passing out again, hehe. I might even take the rest of the night off, like I should have done last night. Well, lesson learned. I'm not 20 years old any more and my energy is not unlimited.

So, to the work from last night.

I pretty much hate it all, lol. But, in a good, 'I learned some lessons,' way. I think there were 3 big takeaways.

For now, focus on one project at a time. My mind is focused on the postcards I want to send out, not painting. So, painting was a bad idea and with my subconscious engaged elsewhere, the energy I usually bring to the canvas wasn't really there. Technically some okay stuff, but, artistically....meh.
I need to take more time on my work. When I got home later last night from dinner with my friends I really wanted to get a lot done. To produce, to move forward, to learn. But, in the rush to do all that, I just cruised through the motions versus feeling what I was doing. There's a big difference, and comparing last night to another night...it's like, well, night and day.
I need to up my technique game. I think my buddy at the coffee shop summed it up best...'kids coloring.' Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing...big bold lines and colors with simple shapes, but, it has to be purposeful. Admittedly I'm still doing a lot of experimenting and playing around, but, my technique needs a lot of work. I'm sure people who've been doing this for decades say the same thing, and that I'll never be truly satisfied, but right now, way too elementary.

With all that being said, let's take an actual look.

Not too bad.

A far cry from where I began when it comes to technique and such. Creatively I say it's pretty weak. A good start for another painting down the road, but by itself I probably wouldn't look at it twice. I'm sure you'll see iterations of this in the future once I get the other project off my plate. Why did I write climb? Your guess is as good as mine. Perhaps it represents my aspirational nature, lol.

I'm definitely getting better at skulls :) This one I did let myself play a little bit, and I think you can see the energy. The original was just black, but as I finished I knew it needed something to make it pop. Lately red has been my go to. I mean, it's hard not to look at read, and check it out again just because it's so jarring.

When I started dabbing on the red it was just a few highlight lines, but, as I began to blend I became enamored with the affect it was having on the skull overall.

As to why I didn't cover the entire skull...and trust me I thought about it for quite a few minutes...is because I felt it would make the image too heavy, unbalanced. Imagine the whole skull being red like that...suddenly there are a bunch of other images you likely have in your memory that will overpower what you're actually seeing and your brain will make connection that I might not want to infer.

This way, you're left wondering why the hell he didn't finish, hehe.

Seriously...one of these days I'll fit everything on to one canvas...

Or when I have the funds and space, start enlarging the canvases in some fun ways I got in the back of my head. But, until then, hate me if you will This one started out as a finger painting of a skull. Once again, like I said in the intro, my heart wasn't really in to it, and so it went from it's humble monochromatic origins to this. I mixed several different brush types moving through several progressively lighter grays, finishing with some finger dabbed white. Well, almost finished...with what I thought was the last dab I was suddenly inspired to go nuts with my hands.

Most of my brushes/cups were dirty by this point so I was using the palm of one hand for the wet paint and the other to put it on. When that inspiration hit I rubbed my palms together and started to blend in rough, general motions. I added more paint, I think it was gray, and just let the emotions guide me on what to do. I like how the grays turned out, but the whites are still, well, fucked. But, baby steps and building blocks.

I really felt like getting some color in, even though it was getting late. Which led me to hurrying...which was a bad idea. But, overall I was pretty satisfied with the technical end of what came out. It's a definite evolution from the earlier painting, and it does achieve what I was going for, which was a better mask painting than the one I had done previously. Energy-wise...needs more red, more white space, more verve...but, it is what it is. And, if you want to see me paint it...

Music: Andrew Codeman

I had a blast with this one.

It was cool to see how it evolved through the process. I did take more time in thinking about the color combinations, but I also made another big mistake... So far I've been able to keep the learning curve going by buying as cheap as I could so that I would never feel like I was wasting, no matter how bad the mistake or how many POS's came off the line. But, for some reason as I was mixing the lighter blue I was worried about running out of white and purchasing more...which messed me up....an error I correctly later on this painting...but, too late to really give it the feel I wanted to. So, another lesson reinforced :)

This one really does suck, lol.

And I'm cool with that because I was mainly using off the last of the paint I had sitting in the cups. I had some fun playing with the colors, but how weak my technique is really showed up, because, seriously, wtf is this? It's not a mask, it's not a face, it's a bundle of color. That might have been because it was like 130am...not an excuse, but let me refer back to the whole burning a candle at both ends for too long thing...hehe. Which makes me wonder how I'm actually pounding out this many coherent sentences...They are coherent...right?

There are some cool points to this one that I like...

As in how I used the gray. It might be a little hard to see with how dark the picture is, but the gray is actually about the right shade to fill the mid-tone range and help give it a bit of depth. But, to be honest, that's a bit of a reach, hehe.

I ask...what do you think this looks like? To me it's kinda like a masked dog face....lol

So, thank you for stopping by! I'm going to cut this post off here before I pass out while typing. I still need to get the video together and I'm crossing my fingers that I'll be able to do it without falling asleep halfway through. Which...since I could be posting this at any time, doesn't make much sense to talk about it, but, just go with it ;) Hope y'all have a great day and wish me luck on taking a night off!

Wessel