My Creative Journey 10 + Watch Me Paint! Ep. 03

mikesthoughts (58)in #art • 6 years ago

Every journey begins with a step...and continues with countless more. There is no end to the creative path. Only progress. To get better you have to do. Your skills, your mind, your art will not get better unless you try. And trying means you will fail a lot. But, if you keep at it, eventually you will triumph, break through, and be where you want to be. Here is another step on my journey.

Last night I pushed too hard. And, today, I felt it. Even last night I felt it. In my warm up drawings, in my paintings, the feeling that maybe I should take a break tonight was pervasive. But, still I created, or tried to. I didn't let myself get pissed, or throw down my pen/brush in frustration, I just worked through it. I knew I'd pay for it in the morning...but I didn't really care. To me, this path is all I have, it's what I am and who I want to be.

I started with some drawings, like the one above and the 3 below. I've noticed a subtle change in them as compared to before I painted. It's hard to describe, but I definitely like the flow more. I feel I might have to retrain myself on details because the paints, between the large brush size and the almost constraining canvas size, has got me going a bit too bold. But, like I said, I like the energy of my lines soooooo, hehe.

Honestly, I do a lot of these marker drawings now to keep the wider audience interested. What I paint is kind of hard to access...I guess, via small photo. People are like, 'cool...', but samurai and geisha, well, those are easy to get. Which, is completely cool I need to be able to do a lot of things in parallel. Painting and drawing. Work I like, and work that others are interested in. Eventually more people will get what I do and how I do it and hopefully jump on. Until then, I'm going to keep doing me, just in several forms, hehe.

So, on to my first painting of the night...which I think was this one.

I call it 'resting cow-god.' If you sit back far enough from the monitor, you might see what I'm talking about, hehe. It's what I call a rescue painting, hehe. Where what I wanted to do failed miserably so I decided to wing it. Recently one of my buddies has been bugging me to pencil crap in before I start painting, to keep my proportions and such. And this was the perfect example. Even being my first painting my mind was nimble enough to create an entirely new story for the painting and run with it, which was super cool. If you can't see what I'm talking about in the painting, no worries, I'm kinda crazy :)

Remember when I said I was going through a rough patch with creativity last night, lol. Here's a great example. I think I still managed pretty well to drag it into my interesting characters category. Don't ask about the words randomly written on him...no idea where that came from. But, it's my Super Being Space Thing...so, anything goes with him :)

Nothing much to say about this one. I think this was another point I tried to paint like someone else, try another subject matter, and failed before I even put brush to paper. My mind and hand just wouldn't let me do anything different, hehe. I got a cool video of this one, though, as I painted it. So, if you want to see a fast time-lapse of this one coming together watch the following video :) I really got to work on noses... sigh

Watch me Paint! Ep. 03

Music by: Enfanciso

I'm probably happiest with this one. I had a blast painting it, the story I had in my head was fun to work to, and I played a bit more with shadowing and drama. As always, best to view these paintings from a little ways away from the screen, hehe. Wish there was a deep story to it buuuuut, not really :)

Maybe my art should be categorized as painting for crazy people, lol. I mean, I see the picture in the painting, but everyone takes a minute. Which is really cool, because then lots is open to interpretation :) This, honestly, was another rescue. I literally had to take the painting and turn it in a different direction. I know what I did wrong...I got paint-happy. Instead of letting simplicity rule, I just couldn't let things be. I had this conversation today with an artist buddy. How my hand and mind won't let me control exactly what's created. How the medium and the mode really influences what comes out. For me, this paper just screams for lots of ink. The brown just doesn't seem to be a place for blankness and white space...maybe when I kick to white with some colors there'll be more :)

And I believe this is where I finally finished up. I had only planned to do 5, but that last one made me shudder and I prefer to end on a positive note :) It's a basic face close-up. I just let myself flow with it. I seem to be able to get one eye right...but there's always something I feel is wonky about the second. Something I'll have to pay attention to for tonight.

Right now it's about time to head home and get creating...which is both scary and exciting. Whenever I confront a black piece of paper I get the same scared/excited feeling. I mean, I'm about to put something down that's permanent, well, semi-permanant. I might be about to create something amazing. I might be about to create a flop. And it always feels like there's a razor edge different between the two.

Thanks for dropping by and reading/looking/watching. I hope you enjoyed yourself!