A couple of pen and ink sketches.
1/20/2010
1/15/2010
Almost there.
I have several passions: alla prima oil painting, plein air painting, watercolor painting, sculpting, animation, illustration, children's book illustration, self publishing, paper craft, vector art, and the list goes on. Which do I choose? I am inspired by everything and every artist around me, one of the hazards of living amongst so many incredibly talented artist friends, I suppose. How do I fit in? Sometimes I feel like asking my friends, "who am I? A painter? A designer? An illustrator?"
In an attempt to resolve all of these deeply personal questions, lately I have told myself that instead of choosing one type of art to focus on, why not choose them all? Honestly, I think I have no choice. Like many artists, I have a visual way of relating to the world, the effect of which is imagery that floats up from the depths into my visual imagination and stays there, bugging me like a child asking 'are we there yet?' over and over until we actually get there. The destination seems to be my sketchbook, scraps of paper, notes taken on my iphone, photo collections on my laptop that reflect a concept, piles of print outs from various sources, collected objects for still life paintings, and on.
First order of business is a little girl who has renamed herself Hummingbird. I am unsure yet how I will paint these - watercolor, gouache, digitally... whatever the case, here are the sketches. My thoughts on this character are complex, although the images do not reflect that, at least not yet. I figure that if I keep working on these, they will evolve into something less sentimental. I am unsure of how old she is - she seems to be somewhere between age 3 and 10, still a child. The challenge in illustrating a child, especially a girl, is in NOT making her overly cute and too saccharin. I suppose these images are such, but my hope is they will become less so as the character develops in sketches. For now, she continues to swim all around the coral reef of my mind, discovering things I didn't even know were there. I hope she doesn't get lost...or do I?
In an attempt to resolve all of these deeply personal questions, lately I have told myself that instead of choosing one type of art to focus on, why not choose them all? Honestly, I think I have no choice. Like many artists, I have a visual way of relating to the world, the effect of which is imagery that floats up from the depths into my visual imagination and stays there, bugging me like a child asking 'are we there yet?' over and over until we actually get there. The destination seems to be my sketchbook, scraps of paper, notes taken on my iphone, photo collections on my laptop that reflect a concept, piles of print outs from various sources, collected objects for still life paintings, and on.
First order of business is a little girl who has renamed herself Hummingbird. I am unsure yet how I will paint these - watercolor, gouache, digitally... whatever the case, here are the sketches. My thoughts on this character are complex, although the images do not reflect that, at least not yet. I figure that if I keep working on these, they will evolve into something less sentimental. I am unsure of how old she is - she seems to be somewhere between age 3 and 10, still a child. The challenge in illustrating a child, especially a girl, is in NOT making her overly cute and too saccharin. I suppose these images are such, but my hope is they will become less so as the character develops in sketches. For now, she continues to swim all around the coral reef of my mind, discovering things I didn't even know were there. I hope she doesn't get lost...or do I?
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