My 2017 Resolution

Over the last two years I have been adjusting to a life where making art does not comprise the majority of my time. It certainly has been a weird adjustment and I am still figuring out how to budget my time so that I can regularly create my own artwork. 

In the hopes that I will let this inspire me to create more artwork, I have decided to create a New Year's Resolution specifically for my artwork. This is going to be loosely based on a set of goals that I created back in March.

New Year's Resolution (Art Edition)

As my art is still an important part of my life, I resolve to devote a portion of 2017 to the creation of my own artwork. I resolve to create, blog, and exhibit throughout the year in the hopes that I might inspire both myself and others with the work that I produce. These are my goals:

• During normal work weeks, I will schedule time each week to work on some artwork (sketching, painting, etc.). This does not necessarily mean that I must complete a drawing or painting every week, but I resolve to work on some sort of artwork on a weekly basis. 
• During vacations, I will devote a portion of my time to catching up and starting new projects. These projects are to be worked on in the hopes of exhibiting my work locally. 
• Throughout the year, I will develop a plan for improving my figure drawing skills, including regular sketching, with the possibility of devoting a sketchbook to figure studies.
• I will establish a connection with other artists in the area, including establishing a connection with the Multicultural Arts Center.

These goals may be simple, but it is their simplicity that I hope will inspire me to actually complete them. Writing these goals in such a public forum is somewhat terrifying , but I wanted to post them here in the hopes that it will help hold me accountable for my work. My work may not always turn out the way I want it to, and that's okay. The way to create better artwork is to continuously produce artwork. I will remember that even 15 minutes a day is enough to get started. 

December 21st, 2016

An Unexpected Retreat

This weekend, my parents and I took an overnight trip to Southern California. As usual, we can't go by the Magic Kingdom without making a stop on property (even if it only means going to Downtown Disney). 

My parents had to go help my sister move back in (she goes to school nearby) and there wasn't going to be enough room to have four people, groceries, and a whole lot of luggage in the car, so I opted to stay at Downtown Disney (which was a reeealllly big sacrifice for me, I know). I had planned on shopping, looking at the hotels, and maybe sketching. But my original plans turned into a half a day of sketching in one of my favorite places and a lesson in the art of slowing down and loosening up.

I started at the new(ish)ly renovated Disneyland Hotel. I got to sit in a giant teacup and sketch the lobby. One of the more unique drawing experiences I've ever had. This sketch is also something that I would categorize as my "normal" way of sketching: trying to be exact, feeling nervous and having everything look a bit stiff.

I continue wandering around the hotel and came across the perfect place to have my wedding (someday). It was also at this point that a Cast Member came up and complimented me on what I was doing. Now, at that point, I was just working on proportion, and there wasn't much on the page, so I took that compliment as a Disney employee trying to make my day more "magical". And yet, even though she was probably just doing her job, there's always something about interacting with Cast Members that puts me in a really good mood. I spent the rest of this drawing smiling and humming Disney music, which caused me to loosen up a bit.

Sitting at an outdoor fireplace and sketching? Awesome!

I moved over to the most beautiful hotel on the property, the Grand Californian. This hotel is inspired by "the famed arts and crafts movement" and the ceiling was beautiful...but painful to draw.

I ended with drawing the "main attraction" of the lobby; the fireplace. Although I can't say for sure, I THINK this was inspired by the fireplace in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, so it was especially enjoyable to hear the player piano playing HBOND music. That, combined with the other Disney music, made this my favorite place to draw.

So...what I loved about this was getting the opportunity to slow down and enjoy my art. With all of our busy schedules, it can be hard to enjoy the things we were once passionate about. But we must make that time. 

On a side note. This is my 50th blog post! I have really enjoyed sharing my work with you guys and hope you have enjoyed looking at it.

A Mountain Retreat

This weekend, my church took it's annual trip to the mountains for a retreat. For the ten years I have been going, I've always brought work with me. This year, though, I decided to take a gamble and not bring any work with me. No grading, no homework, no cell phone (gasp!); just a couple of books, my Bible, and my painting supplies.

Ever since I got this new job, I have struggled to find time to make my own art. That's one of the things I want to make sure I make time for, so throughout the weekend I carved out time to work on two paintings (one below my original goal...)

Have a good week!

Watercolor Wednesday - A Simple Start

Since I'm no longer taking art classes as part of my education, I'm trying to use this blog to help me keep improving my skills and most importantly, to keep drawing.

Over the last year, I've discovered that watercolor is one of my favorite mediums to work with  (probably second only to charcoal), so I decided to start filling the pages of my watercolor sketchbook and simultaneously keep improving my skills. I was partly inspired by my participation in last year's Inktober to try to find a theme to work with to accomplish this. Hence the "Watercolor Wednesday" idea.

For now, it just means that I'll devote a little time each Wednesday to working in watercolors. Who knows where I'll end up taking it though!

Some On Location Sketching

This last weekend, my church had our annual Lake Day; basically it's our church service, well, at the lake. Over the last couple of years, I've started to use the time before the service to get some quick sketching in. Usually that means some location sketching (meaning the landscape around me), but this years, I wanted to get some work in on my gestures as well.

There's not a huge amount of gestures here; gesture drawing (heck, probably figure drawing in general) is still one of my biggest, if not my biggest insecurity in my art. But, I wanted to post some gestures partly because it makes me feel uncomfortable to do so. Are they perfect? Probably not, yet not every piece of art I make has to be perfect the moment it moves from my pen to the paper. Gestures are still something that I need to work on, so I will continue to do so (hopefully...)

 And actually, given how pressed for time I was, these drawings are more loose than I might have orginially wanted to do...

Painting on the Other Side of the Universe (or at least California...)

Every summer, my dad and I take a day trip to somewhere in California; I sketch, he reads. It's been our way of carving out some time to spend together. For a couple of years, dad's been wanting to show me Mono Lake. Now, being a Central California girl, I've gone to Yosemite at least once a year for as long as I can remember, but I don't really remember going as far as the Eastern side of the Sierras (though the family has traveled that way).

I have never seen a stranger place; Mono Lake seems almost completely unspoiled, save for a handful of tourists (numbers no where near as large as the ones we passed on our way through Yosemite). The lake is huge, surrounded by volcanic mountains, and contains more salt than the Pacific Ocean. That wasn't the weirdest sight, however. The coolest thing about Mono Lake are the tufa towers. on the south side of the lake. It seems weird that we are still in California.

These things remind me of coral, and the ones that we were near were huge. Apparently, these were once underwater, but as the water level of the lake goes down, they become more visible.

I used to love using chalk pastels, but during college I sort of fell out of practice with them, so I decided to bring them along. I wanted to warm up with a quick charcoal drawing.

 

Afterwards, I broke out the chalk pastels, which was challenging. It took a lot of false starts to get to this point and I'm happy I got a chance to go out and do some plein air work in such an unusual setting.

Charcoal Reversal Demo

When most people work with charcoal, it's usually drawing on white paper. The process of doing a charcoal reversal drawing is similar in that it's black charcoal on white paper, but we, well, reverse the process. Here's a basic demo on how to create a reverse charcoal drawings. I am planning on adding photos of the process soon.

A Final Look at School

This semester was a great end to six years of undergraduate work. I can't believe where I started and where I am now.

This is one of the first pieces I completed after graduating high school:

This is one of the last pieces I've completed as an undergraduate:

This is a good thing for every artist to remember: it really doesn't seem like you're improving in the day to day grind of being an artist. And in reality, maybe the improvements you make each day are pretty small, but the important thing is to continue working so that you can continue to make progress.

Anyway, what do my final projects look like? I've finished the first 50 pages of a screenplay (and I hope to finish it this summer) for one thing. I also...

Finished a portfolio for my printmaking class...

...made three rings out of bronze, one out of thread, pins and paperclips, a bell, and a brace...

And spent the entire semester trying to learn and enjoy where I'm at as much as I can. This is definitely not where I set out to be when I graduated high school with dreams of working at Pixar, yet I don't think I would trade where I am and where I'm going (even though I'm still not quite sure where that is...) I hope I continue to grow as an artist throughout my life.

I also want to take a moment to thank everyone who's been reading my blog! I've reached my 35th post since starting this blog back in 2011 and I've really enjoyed sharing my work with you! It's great to have an audience and I hope that my art has been bringing you joy. Please share my blog with others, I love showing people what my work means to me!

Printmaking with Watercolors

Although I've been working with oils and inks while I create my own prints, I've also had the opportunity to experiment with using watercolors in printmaking. I also wanted to experiment with printmaking without a huge printing press.

Here's a demo that I'm hoping to teach my students someday:

Making Up for Lost Time

I guess not making artwork or posting on my blog as often as I'd like to have done this year has sort of lit a fire under me. Thanks to my brand new smart phone (I've finally entered the 21st century...) I've been able to catalog my artwork right as I'm finishing it. Here's some more of the prints I've been making:


After I finished my series on my cultural heritage, I got kind of stuck for new ideas. I ended up making something that has the look of parchment...

 This one ended up looking like a microscope slide.

 I tried to go deeper into the histories of each country, but there is so much history, especially in certain countries, I didn't know where to begin. This represented the all reaching power of Rome, including the Italian word for almighty, "Altissimo"

 After that, I went back to my specific family names and crest, and let the design elements of my family crests inspire me.

 I wanted to take that idea and abstract it more.

And now for something completely different. I was listening to a song by Rend Collective and let the words inspire this piece.  I'm also excited about this piece because it was my first opportunity to work with actual tyesetting. May I say, thank goodness for computers!

Abstract Exploration

Over the last semester in my monotype class, I've been given a lot of freedom to explore my own ideas and methods.  Although some might find this freeing, doing stuff like that has always sort of overwhelmed me. Without a lot of boundaries, I start questioning whether or not the ideas I have are right or wrong.

Still, the days of living with strict artistic guidelines seem to be leaving me, at least for a while. With my graduation coming on a few weeks, I'll have a lot more opportunities to get really creative, experiment, and grow as an artist.  So, am I comfortable with leaning towards more abstract pieces? Not exactly.  But I recognize that by pushing myself outside of my comfort zone, I'm growing as an artist.
Here's just a taste of what I've been working on.