Color On My Mind

Despite the fact that I said that artwork is not my forte, I've been spending an awful lot of time blogging about artwork. I've started to spend more and more time on it, so I guess it's worth saying a few more words about it.

That said, I thought that I would talk a little more about color. A lot of you know that I really like color. When I was in high school, I had a pair of purple leather high tops and red suede shoes. I also had a bright rainbow stripe knit dress covered with little clear paillettes. Yikes. I've toned my clothing color down over the years with some coaching from some good friends (you know who you are), but I still love a pop of color.

Here's the irony in my artwork situation. I am so shy about applying bold strokes to paper that all my color looks totally washed out. Over the past eight art classes, I have noticed that everyone has artistic habits. One woman has a tendency to draw very hard outlines around her objects to define them; another has a very heavy hand when it comes to shadows. Me? Every image I draw is light. Almost ghostly. No one could accuse me of overcommitting to a line.

I started out thinking that this was a flaw. But I've come to feel that it might just be my artistic signature. For example, take this picture of pillows I drew in class last week. You could criticize it for being way too gray, but in a way, it creates a mood and intention. The background fabric was red, but I hated the color combination, so I made it a gray/white, which give the whole image a bit of a washed out look. Maybe you feel differently about it, but I like how sad the pillows look because of how pale they are and how gray the background is.

Next, over the weekend, I set up a still life in my own living room! Do you remember when I said that this whole drawing this is really messy? Ugh! I'm going to have to find a better solution. Anyway, I made a commitment that I was going to try to saturate my colors a little more. I think I achieved that goal, at least more so than I have in the past, and I achieved a pretty realistic look. However, does the picture says much other than here's a pile of pillows? I'm not sure. I like the image capture, and I love that I framed it a little differently by just showing the corners. But does the color say anything?

Lastly, here is the image we worked on in our second-to-last class. This is the first class in which I felt like I was able to really make use of my lack-of-coloring skills. Since we were working with black paper, the point was to really use the color of the background to greater effect. I used very little color to fill in the shape and color of the spools of yarn/thread, but I think despite the minimal line use, you can still tell what it is.

It was remarkable how different my image was from everyone else's. Overall, because I used so little pastel, it looks like the room is really dark. Everyone else drew spools that were 80% filled in, while I only filled in 20% of the spools. So far, this is my favorite drawing.

Obviously, because I have written so much about these pieces, I seem to be becoming kind of invested in this whole "drawing" thing. My last art class was last night (self portraits - scary!), but I think I'll be continuing to experiment a little more on my own. You'll be able to tell, I guess, if you see more posts in the future.

Mid-week Creative Droplet - Shopping Bag

Well, my husband's birthday was on Sunday (for those in Chicago, Katsu was deliciously authentic - try the egg custard with unagi), and the whole weekend turned into a rather lazy one. Hence, my blog entry isn't quite complete yet.

However, here's a little mid-week artwork to keep the posting coming. In my art class last week, we started working on objects with a little more dimension - shading and the such.I have to say that I'm pretty happy with the fact that this think looks like it has dimension and creases. My favorite part? Check out the left front edge of the bag and how it goes from being defined by a white highlight at the top to a dark line at the bottom. Such a triumph! Yes, these are the things that excite me these days...

Trying My (Blackened) Hand at Drawing

To continue my holiday theme, I want to tell you about the fantastic Christmas gift my husband purchased for me this year. I have to say that among ideas he has come up with, this was a pretty good one - a course of art classes at Lillstreet Art Center. Nice work, Chris! I forgive you for the L.L. Bean moccasin debacle.

Despite my mother pressuring me to take jewelry making (I mean, really? What am I going to do with learning how to texture metal, Mom?!), I decided to go with Beginning Drawing.

So, I told you in my first blog post that I'm not the best artist. I was constantly ruining my GPA with stupid B's in art class. Luckily, I no longer have a 5th-grade straight-A streak to maintain, so there's a little less pressure on doing well in this class.

It's a good thing, too. My weak drawing skills didn't totally fail me, but I definitely was not as skilled of an artist as the other 5 people in the class. And people, that includes drawing circles.

We used vine charcoal and some compressed charcoal for this class. For those that know me really well, this whole art class is kind of an issue for me because I hate getting my hands dirty. I'm the girl who only uses four fingers to eat ribs. The other six are up in the air as if I'm drinking two incredibly tiny cups of tea. And for someone who hates messes, damn, I had no idea how messy charcoal could really be. There was dust everywhere - under my fingernails, in every crease of my hand, smudges on my face... I felt like I needed to be wearing a smock and sweatpants that I never want to wear again. I digress.

We started off slowly by literally drawing circles; then we upgraded to spheres:

Not so creative. But then, we started learning more about shading techniques, sizing, and positioning of an object on the page to manipulate how the object is perceived. We drew an apple:

...and an orange with a vase:

Personally, the apple was my favorite object of the evening. (Do you like the little shine on the top left?). However, the orange picture is the only one in which I made an artistic decision. That table actually ends another foot and a half to the left and another foot in front of those items. But I wanted to keep the focus on the orange and vase.

We learned that realistic depictions of things aren't the goal in drawing and artwork. It's about manipulating the artistic scene or setting so that you show your viewer what you want them to see. For someone who tends to get caught up in telling the truth about everything and in trying to depict how things ARE, this is a pretty freeing revelation. I can actually lie to you about how I saw things, enhance your experience, and not get into legal trouble! (Marketers, you know what I'm talking about!)

Stay tuned for future projects. I look forward to sharing more lies with you.