January
Hello!
Yes, Its a Happy New Year!
Here are this month's offers, projects and studies.
This Month's Artwork Offer:
Title: Floki
This Month's Projects:
I will be working on a Vikings Costume in preparation for the viking festival in Jorvik
The George Llewelyn Lloyd Study will be published this month by disneygeek
I will be reading Viking Britain by Thomas Williams
This Month's Study & Thought:
A landscape oil painting with cat paw prints on the sky
Nature's Influence on my Artwork:
Seeking a source of inspiration or imagery to draw from can often be challenging for an artist. Do I want to draw something intricate and detailed, or something clean and polished? A section of mature bark or the leaf of a young sapling? Questions, questions…
My tendency is to lean towards more unconventional subject matters, something unusual that both challenges my abilities and the eye of the beholder. These subjects provide a challenge and opportunity for me to expand on what I can see and to go deeper. When drawing portraits, I tend to choose images of people with sharp and defined features as opposed to vague and obscure traits.
Something for me to grow on, going forward, is to focus on drawing more obscure portraits and examine the detail in more depth. In a way, I’m already doing this with images of rough branches. Its time to be challenged and switch my approach.
My 2019 goal is to draw genuine, ‘lived in’ faces.
Looking backward at 2018, during the month of December, I completed a few pieces that I gave as gifts at Christmas. One of these works was a landscape in oil on board. My first layers of oil were down on the board when my pet cat, Smokey, decided to put her paws in the purple and trail it over the area of sky in the piece. Bob Ross’s quote “We don’t make mistakes, just happy little accidents” came to mind. I carried on despite the purple sky blobs, but despite my efforts I found it difficult to blend the tones together. It became a rectangular puddle of brown and maroon tones. Something to come back to, I think…
I’ve been so comfortable of late with painting objects, subjects and items of detail like leaves, pencils and vases. The challenge of painting a landscape in oil is was nothing new to me, as I tend to use watercolours, but the medium of oil is something I failed to anticipate. “Worse than mud”, one artist used to say. In the end, I illustrated the landscape in fine line ink, a medium I’m reasonably comfortable with.
This was a reminder that I need more practice in the art of oil painting landscapes (oil painting in general) and to not assume that because I am comfortable with objects, shapes and forms, I will be comfortable with landscapes (or oil). Onwards and upwards.
My 2019 goal is to view a landscape as a form of object, layered, multicoloured, busy and complex, but an object nonetheless.
I’m off to Jorvik soon to commune with Viking ancestors… more on that next time.
Thank you for your ongoing support! It means the world to me! ☺︎
Jordie - MsBlackInk
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