Drawing

As I work through, my process has been altered a bit.

I start­ed with an 8x8 size and now I’m explor­ing 5x7 and 4x6. Yes­ter­day also decid­ed to try some 6x8. I have pur­chased frames in all these sizes.

I’m at a stand­still on the 8x8 size for a moment. One because I’ve cut two out of the three to 5x7. I find  square com­po­si­tions more dif­fi­cult. Two because the 8x8 pad I have is actu­al­ly a block, so I have to fin­ish the top image to move onto the next. The oth­er paper I have been using I have cut down to the appro­pri­ate size from a larg­er sheet. It is cur­rent­ly a lady­bug, but it is sit­ting on a clover. I have also planned on a mat­te for it because my frames came with them. I felt like I should try a mat­te out even though I don’t usu­al­ly use them. It does­n’t fit my cur­rent rules for my series. Should I just fin­ish it to get it off the block? Do I have the time?

I have also altered a rule today about the direc­tion­al com­po­si­tion. I thought I want­ed to keep them ver­ti­cal or hor­i­zon­tal, but my con­cept was to make them live­ly as opposed to a bug on the pin. I thought them walking/crawling off the edge of the page might be enough and now I’m unsure. I played with the ori­en­ta­tion of a but­ter­fly and I’m real­ly enjoy­ing the move­ment in it.

One of the bee­tles I’ve start­ed is also on black paper. And although I had antic­i­pat­ed play­ing with hot press and cold press, I’m still uncer­tain about the black. I pur­chased the black for anoth­er series I had in mind where I was using the black paper as the black in the image and this was my small­er cut off when I cut up the large sheet. I’m wor­ried about the vibran­cy of the paint. I may have to do an under­paint­ing in bleed­proof white and see what happens.

I am also try­ing to decide if I should stick to my out­line and then paint rule. I made it because it is not how I usu­al­ly work. I’m play­ing with should I stay in the lines. The lines were sup­posed to sim­pli­fy water­colour a bit for me. It gives me an area to play with that already has an image. So far I am still mak­ing it work, oth­er than my black paper, which can’t take an eras­er for pen­cil marks and most ink does­n’t show up on the black. I do have some white gel pens that will be my next step.

Art is exper­i­men­ta­tion. I have to fig­ure out what works and what does­n’t. If I don’t end­ing up includ­ing some­thing in my final dis­play I don’t.