A painter, not I? actually, maybe?

Reflecting on new skills, a couple months later...

I’ve been meaning to write this for like a solid month but my brain kept shoveling it to the side like the snow and slush that’s been piling up on the streets here in Providence. Not sure why! I think it’s just been hard to knit my thoughts together because I’ve been deep in dummying territory and then traveling back and forth to CT made it hard to sit and reflect. No time like the present though!

So, every now and again I’ll take a class because it’s fun to try and push my skills and see what else I can do. I’ve picked up some cool ideas through Warrior Art Camp, like the book cover class, but I’ve kind of not had great luck with the painting ones I’ve tried and I’ve largely chalked that up to the fact that I don’t think like a painter. 20+ years of working digitally and having a strong printmaking background means I approach things with drawing and printmaking more in focus. My last painting workshop, I did this, which I fully admit I didn’t really know what I was doing. There are things I liked about this but I couldn’t figure out how to pull off the idea fully well….

the idea was supposed to be closing time at the boba shop, much to the chagrin of the teens!

One thing I learned a lot during that class is: I don’t draw typical scenes very well. In that I don’t always think in terms of perspective, lighting, shadow— it doesn’t come natural. And I don’t tend to pull reference from films or photography— it’s more from art or from what my gut sense is telling me. And in this one, I now see a lot of things I focused on small individual shading choices without considering how it worked across the scene, or where I could individually focus to make certain things stand out (that said, there’s some cool color choices I made in this! I don’t fully hate it!)

Begin again.

So back in July, maybe in a bit of post-explosion folly, I decided what the hell let’s sign up for another class. This time I signed up with Austen Marr’s Color as Your Secret Weapon class, which I was curious about because… color is one thing I get complimented about but admittedly, it’s an intuitive process for me and sometimes it can take a really long time til things lock in place! And there’s always more to learn. So I signed up, and then forgot about it for a while.