Since I've been gone...

The Peter and the Wolf sets were built, I painted them, and the shows went great. Glad it all went well and they came out good. It was a bit crazy that last few weeks getting it all done, but hey, what's life without a bit of crazy now and then :) 

The dancers did a great job and the lighting was great. All in all I was really happy with how my paint job came out. And now I am happy to be getting back to doing much smaller paintings and drawings! 

I will miss seeing that wolf around town a little bit though... I kind of liked seeing my art all over town lately! 

 

I am going sort of crazy trying to make art and run my business (www.pinkletinkbaby.com) and build sets for Peter and the Wolf and take care of my kids and get my garden in and do the household chores while my husband is away traveling for work.... and and and the list goes on and on and on!  Things are hectic to say the least and my head is spinning trying to keep track of it all. 

I actually did quite a bit of drawing last week, but I wasn't thrilled with any of it.  This drawing of my dog, Amy, in my sketchbook is the only one I was really totally happy with.

In other news my Peter and the Wolf poster is starting to pop up everywhere and it's cool to see it around town. I like seeing my showing up in places I don't expect to see it... that's pretty cool :)

On the road...

 

Last week I was traveling with my family and in-laws which is why no posts last week. Traveling and making art is a lot of fun, but tricky with kids. It got really difficult after illness set in for me and my oldest daughter (my younger daughters had the bug before we left and were on antibiotics for the first few days of the trip).  Taking care of sick kids while on vacation was rough and I didn't make too much progress in making art after the first few days. But here are a few things we saw along the way.  I discovered that it is possible to do small paintings in the car like the one below, but not to do tighter and more precise drawings as above.  For me, the movement of the car makes drawing difficult, but loose watercolor works quite well I thought.

This week I start work on rehabbing sets for Peter and the Wolf for Turning Pointe Dance Studio.  I already did the artwork for the poster for the performance, so hopefully the work to do the sets will go smoothly and they will come out well.  As soon as I have the finished poster available I will post it here, hopefully soon.

Excuses, excuses

For years I have spent a lot of time making excuses for why I don't have time to make art.  I say I didn't get enough sleep last night and I can't focus.  I say I am busy with taking care of kids.  I say I need to work. I say I will draw tomorrow.  Lately I have decided I need to make the excuses go the other way... I need to say, no, I am sorry but right now I am drawing and I will do that other thing that needs to be done when I am finished.  OK? Good.  Glad you all agree :)

A few words about artistic satisfaction

Here is a set of pages from my most recent sketchbook.  Both are from the same day, but the one on the left made me feel completely as though I had failed (after all, it is difficult to make a good drawing while watching your kids riding their bikes on the road, right?), and the one on the right left me feeling like I might be able to sort of draw after all.  When I looked at these pages after completing them I wasn't sure if I would share them together or just scan the drawing of the French macarons and try to forget the other existed at all. But then I thought, what the hell, I started this blog as an exploration and to record my artistic journey for those who care to look.  Some drawings are better than others.  Some leave me feeling like an artistic disaster.  Some I like.  And so, I am off to make some more terrible drawings... ones with weird perspective and crazy lines that don't always make sense.  But somewhere among the crazy maybe there will be another lovely, clean and tidy box of macarons, or some other wonderful thing that will be a good drawing... the only way to get to the good drawings, the ones that you finish with a sigh and a smile, is to get past the crappy drawings, to keep drawing.  If Van Gogh had just quit what would have happened? His early drawings are really pretty lousy, but look at his paintings toward the end of his life... they were amazing. 

I often go through my sketch books out of order.  I don't know why I have the urge to start something on one half of the double page or the other some days, but I often will draw something on the right side of the page and then go back and fill in the left, as I did here.  I did the drawing of  the hydrant, and then the next day added my bike on the left hand page because I felt like the green of the bike would be a good thing next to the green of the hydrant top.  I like the way the whole layout turned out and this week of assignments to do directly in ink with no pencil drawing first has been interested and both freeing and scary at the same time.  I like to lay out a very sketchy sketch with pencil usually before starting in with ink and not doing that obviously made for somewhat wonky and crazy lines in places, but I rolled with it and I am relatively happy with the outcome on most of my drawings this past week. 

This week we begin with drawing in public and drawing in colored pencil as our homework for Sketchbook Skool.... that's so much more relaxing to me than drawing directly in ink... this week should be a breeze! I started by getting out my colored pencils and drawing my teapot just because I like the color and the reflected light on it. Ahhh colored pencil, a little watercolor for the background, and an ink border... now that's something I can relax with!

Now I just need to figure out what to draw in the rest of the page....

Yesterday I admitted my weird love of fire hydrants to the members of Sketchbook Skool... and it turns out I am not the only one who thinks they are pretty great :)

The best part of the day wasn't drawing the fire hydrant at the end of the road though (though that was pretty fun....).  The best thing was when Lucy decided that she was going to sit down and draw too while Tessa was napping.  She got out her pencils and got right to work while I drew with her markers for a while. 

Lucy put all her pencils in rainbow order and then made a drawing of her headphones and her iPod that is pretty great.

And I made a pretty lousy little drawing of the peanut butter jar with some big fat crayola markers that belong to the kids.