Sketchbook

Untitled. Pencil on Paper, 1-23-12

I think this blog is the pressure I needed to produce. Knowing that someone will see what I'm doing, that my art will actually get somewhere past my living room, even if it's not to a lot of eyes, is very exciting and motivating. I had too much caffeine yesterday, and I have today off for being on call all weekend. That combo+motivation to do art = staying up until 4:30 in the morning watching Breaking Bad (really good show!) and drawing. I opened up a sketchbook that has been blank and waiting for.... I don't know, years? I began doing sketches like these in junior high- I would pick faces out of a magazine and just draw them, one by one. I filled a couple of sketchbooks with those. The amazing thing is that you could see the progression of quality just through one sketchbook.

I think it was on   Radiolab that they said that to be really good at something- to be a Clapton or a Mozart or a Picasso or [insert respected artist here] it was less about natural talent and more about just DOING IT over and over- and that to master a skill you had to spend 1000 hours or more on it. That is nearly 42 days. Straight. Just doing that thing. So you better like that thing. And you can't be afraid to suck at that thing for the first 200 hundred hours or so. That's just a reality. We aren't born knowing how to paint or play the guitar. It's just about finding the thing you enjoy and find fulfilling and just doing it while trying to keep your expectations and judgments at bay. Guess Nike had something there.

Since starting this blog, I've already had a couple of interesting conversations with friends about what art means to them and how they perceive their ability to do it. More on this to come!

Pet Shop

Where to begin? I'll keep you in the past for now... 

"Pet Shop". Watercolors on paper, circa 2000?

This was painted in my high school art class during my Freshman year*. This is probably my favorite thing I produced from that class because it most exemplifies my style, and I enjoyed making it the most. Sort of illustration-y, bright colors, precise and detailed. It looks as though there's a story behind it and it (hopefully) makes you wonder what that story is. This is the direction I'm going (or should be) and this was the first time I took a step in that direction. When I painted this I felt excited. I knew there was more to this, and that this is where I belonged. When you see my current "big" project, you'll see the ties in the style.

*Excuse the blurriness and shine- my mom had it framed and it was sealed in or something, so I took a picture of it through the glass:)

Self Portrait

Self Portrait, Oils on Board, ~2004

This is my self portrait. I painted in oils during... maybe my Freshman year of college, I'm guessing around Spring 2004. I remember the pain of having to do a self-portrait. Dreading it, really, and making the professor take several pictures of me before I could find one I liked, or at least could tolerate. Seems silly now. This is the logical first post in an art blog- to start at the most basic level. A simple image of who you are. Or were, in this case. I'm no longer 19, I'm no longer blonde, and I no longer have SUCH low self-esteem that I cannot stand to stare at my own image for a few hours for a painting. But who you were is a stone in the path of who you are and who you will become. That sounded pretty hokey. This blog is meant to show you (whoever you ends up being) the PROCESS, not so much the result. I'll have a separate website for the result- the polished, portfolio-worthy stuff. This will be a journal of sorts- to show you art to do for fun; art that is about MAKING art, not just having something pretty to put up on your wall. I hate categorizing art as "good" or "bad"- it's so polarizing, and it distances art-making from people who don't consider themselves "artists" (to be said in the snobbiest tone possible). I prefer to categorize them as either something you would like to put up on your wall or something that you enjoyed making. Something that turned out the way you hoped it did or something that turned out unexpectedly. I'm also a therapist, so no doubt that will be part of it- art as therapy. I hope this blog is inspiring, revealing, and connecting. Welcome.