Studio Practice: Ups and Downs

"Drawing is like making an expressive gesture with the advantage of permanence." -Henri Matisse

Well, it’s take two on my blog, but sometimes that’s better—maybe. I’ve managed to keep my studio practice going for a few weeks now and it’s making all the difference. I’ve been preparing for shows and doing all kinds of studio things and observing, though I need to make a point to put more observations in my field journal. I haven’t sat down long enough to note the passing of a sphynx moth I observed, the way it’s body shived and it flipped to prepare for the innevitable. I did learn they only live about 10 to 30 days. This poor one looked like a leaf on my porch and I swept at it a few times before I realized it was a moth. I don’t know if my actions contributed to its demise or if it was just waiting out its last moments anyway. I lifted it gently onto the porch ledge where it could pass in peace. I’ll sketch it another time.

Some studies I’ve done for a workshop I’m taking on drawing.

For now, I’ve been painting and getting back to drawing. I keep telling everyone I am retreating back to my practice once shows are over. I want to explore what I know and learn what I don’t. I’ve already started the retreat by going back to studying drawing, by exploring shading and value. I remember reading in Georgia O’Keeffe’s biography that there was a period where she only painted in black. “It was June before I turned to blue,” she said, or something like that. This is a little of that, just getting back to feeling what it was like to just move a pencil and find form. Explore value without the burden of color and get a feel for that. I’m starting from the beginning, going back to understanding the different softness or hardness of each pencil.

It’s not that I’ve forgotten. I’ve just been in production mode, I wanted to return to exploring how to use the tools again. The workshop I’m currently taking is a Skillshare workshop taught by Shayne Wise. I like the step-by-step process of revisiting drawing. I think the shading even makes me think of atmospheric backgrounds in illustrations. I feel like I can already see characters inhabiting the space in those rectangles.

This was the landscape I did in gouache following along with Peggy Kroll Roberts on Patreon.

A menagerie of dogs in sweaters here in this 4×4 gallery wrapped canvas painting.

Brown dog in sweater painted on a woodslice that I’ve added a magnet to.

I’ve been playing around with gouache, which is quickly becoming my favorite medium, both acrylic gouache and designer gouache. Peggy Kroll Roberts and her Patreon has been a wonderful source for gouache exploration. I watched one of her demos on painting a landscape. She had a specific photo, but I chose a river scene I had taken around my house to apply her concepts of value. I have much to learn, but this was a great start and I love the way Peggy approaches her work and shares her process so generously on her Patreon.

I’m still doing my own little paintings to bring to shows and I’ve gone back to the dogs in sweaters motif that emerged a year or so ago. I’m playing around with different shaped dogs and thinking more about shape as I paint. I also pull in a little of what I learned from artist Sally King at a workshop she gave through my hometown library a while back, mostly the underpainting part that helps the dog faces look a little richer. I painted a couple woodslice magnets and I’m doing some on small gallery wrapped canvases as well. I’ll get them up in my shop soon. They are so much fun to paint.
When I first began painting these, my dogs were the inspiration. I then did a commission for a friend of her two little dogs in sweaters that I painted on a wooden tray and now I just keep imagining new dogs with different sweaters. I think the brown dog magnet is one of my favorites.

Not all went as I’d hoped in the studio, as is bound to happen. I did try to paint a still life, well just a teapot. I didn’t love it and so I added things and then just painted some random woman that became all muddy. Still, that is what giving myself time in the studio is all about. It’s about experimentation, play and making bad art and begin okay with that.

I tried to do a whimsical still life in acrylic on paper to add to my collection for my markets. At some point, with collections like this, the first is an accidental discovery I like. The second furthers the exploration in what seems like a good way and maybe the third does, too, if I’m luck, but round about the third or fourth time I try to create something that builds on an idea, something goes awry and that is most definitely what happened here. I will throw it in the box of things that I collect to show me where I’ve been and move on. For now, it’s just good to be pushing paint and graphite while hanging out in my happy place. Soon, it will be cool enough to open the windows again and maybe the next attempt at a still life will add to the collection or take me in a whole new direction.

That’s all I have for now. Ciao!