This starts on Election Day. Yipes! I don't think I talked much about the election/politics/our new world, but painting has totally become a key source of comfort and healing in this time, and my (our) experience of this time has been there in the background.
11/5/24:
My update: haven't painted yet this week (Tuesday's usually one of my days), but I did some more sorting, and found the two reference photos of the wolves that I was working from, plus my first drawing of them. I'll post the drawing here, and also my first wolves painting - or was it the second?* - I can't remember anymore - which hasn't gotten very far, so you can see what total painting paralysis looks like. And then I'll start doing some more work on that one, and see how it goes.
* On further reflection, I'm sure that this one is the second one I started, not the first, because a) I added another lizard, making three lizards in this painting, and b) I was trying a different paper.
It's kind of mind-boggling to me - or at least revealing - that I started this second one when I got paralyzed on the first one, intending it to be a painting I wouldn't take seriously, could play with, and wouldn't get paralyzed around. And then I got paralyzed on this one, too.
The top one is my first drawing of the wolves (with a little paint). The bottom one is the whole painting in its current state. There are some sweet bits, but most of the wolves and large swathes of other areas where I just got too scared to do anything; so there are just tiny isolated areas where I did anything.
Here's a detail of my rabbit (Peach), which I liked a lot (and still like), and then couldn't continue, for fear of ruining it; and another detail of an area that I really love - that blue edge! the feathers! the shape of the tail!
Now I'm ready to PLAY with the darn thing; and, intermittently at least, am looking forward to it.
Late on November 5th, Laini Taylor (the wonderful Laini Taylor, whose books I love and whose very generous and supportive Discord server I'm part of - if you want to find her, go here), wrote "Wow guys, tonight is not fun. Ugh. Trying not to doomscroll. How's everyone doing?"
To which I replied, "Not very well. Sad, horrified; but, what Ashley says, still hoping for a miracle... and getting ready to dive into my wolves paintings and pretend the real world does not exist. And have dived back into The Bear and the Nightingale [by Katharine Arden], and am trying to see the world as a scary fairy tale that somehow, beyond all reasonable hope, we can still survive..."
11/12/24:
My painting time today was spent mostly - but productively I think - looking at my paintings. With a little bit of painting.
On Wolves #2, however (henceforth to be known as The Three-Lizard Wolves Painting), I looked at the lizards and their surrounding area, and thought, "I like the pale, subtle colors; I don't want to intensify that area, but I'm afraid people will miss it..." Solution: give it a contrasting frame. Which ended up looking like there's a full moon there. Which is interesting and, I think, okay... I also did a little more around and on the rabbit.
I am finding both of these paintings increasingly interesting, and I think now I will have fun painting the wolves, where 16 years ago I just got paralyzed.
I also re-taped Wolves #2, after peeling off the old funky tape. So I can paint all the way to the edge again.
11/19/24:
Friday I did a tiny bit of work on one wolf's face. And had fun with it!!! In contrast to the terror and paralysis I felt when working (or not being able to work) on it 16 years ago...
11/22/24:
Did barely anything more. That warm brown below the chin and up the ruff, plus a bit more below that (some of which was still quite wet when I photographed). Not much oomph this week...
11/27/24:
A bit more work on one of the wolves today. And then I went looking for my chicken photos... haven't found them yet...
12/7/24:
Yesterday's painting time:
I don't know what I'm doing but I'm having fun...
12/12/24:
More work on one of the wolves paintings, and (when I felt too frazzled to work on that) another thing I started. Which, as is often the case, I don't know if it's going anywhere; right now it just exists to give me a place to spread paint...
Tech tip: do you want to see any of these larger? Click on the image to make it almost-full-browser-window size. (This is not the same as "full screen...")
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