Visual Art

Posted late for Thursday, December 19th
Well I totally forgot to post last night, but I have a pretty valid reason. In my head at least.

I spent most of yesterday lounging and doing pretty much nothing. (That's not the excuse for not posting, I promise.) It was my first complete day off of EVERYTHING- school, work, church, etc- in a month. And it was glorious, to say the least. So although I spent most of the day doing noting and stocking up on my rest, I spent the last 6 hours of my day working on art.

I have numerous plans for art projects, things that have already been started, things that were finished but need touching up, and things I have yet to start. The list never ends, hence my tattoo. I am "l'artiste joyeuse". The joyous artist. So anyway, I finally started one project last night that I came up with at least six months ago. It's going to be a series of portraits of the people who are most dear to me. Although the first went differently than expected, I'm happy with it.

It took about an hour and a half to do the outline from a picture I have, then I started in on the colored pencil, which has been my medium of choice for years. However, now that I'm becoming more comfortable with paint, I crave more rich colors that colored pencil can't quite give me. So, what I do is work on the drawing, do the colored pencil, and then move to watercolor. I was very pleased with my shading. Where normally, I would start with a base of skin color, I instead pulled out my greens, blues, and purples and everything in between with work on shadows. Although you wouldn't think it, without those colors, the depth just isn't there. So after I finished all the shadow on the portrait, I took the skin colors and did a thin layer over all of it, thus making the shadows just a little bit darker as well.

At that point, it was already about 10:00, so I pulled out my cheap watercolors- like the ones you use in elementary school? And I worked. I finished everything at about 11:30 and went straight to bed. It's not perfect, but art never is. It's looks just like my friend, and I captured the eyes just right, which is normally my struggle. Although I didn't get the laugh that I initially envisioned, this works just as well and shows their heart and kindness. I may add a background later, but for now, this will do.

L'artiste joyeuse is pleased with her work and is thankful for the ability to bring her friends to life, in a sense, even when they are thousands of miles away. To draw, color, and paint in each line and shape and color brings them so much closer than I can describe. Art is a life in and of itself.