Okay, back in the saddle...

Sweetie Pie...

The Girl With Kaleidoscope Eyes...

And The Beat Goes On...

Have Hope...

It's a pretty well known fact that visual artists tend to be on the sensitive side. Most creatives are. That's where a lot of the great work comes from. I used to try to deny these feelings when I was having a bad day, and for the most part, I don't think anyone really knew. I'm learning  that  these are some of the most lucid periods in my creative process, and that I just need to  experience them.

Today was one of those days. I typically don't watch fanatical Christian broadcasts, but I have limited channels on my T.V. I happened upon (or perhaps was Divinely guided to) a sermon by someone I actually think sounded pretty sane. I got a lot from it and I created this while I listened to it.  I honestly feel a little better getting this out of my heart and onto this paper. Hopefully tomorrow's drawing will be back to my normal upbeat self, but if not, I'm not going to fight it. Whatever happens, happens.

Homage to Degas...in a Roundabout Way

So today would have been Edgar Degas' 178 birthday! I'm sure he never in his wildest dreams, could've imagined how much the world would change. It makes me wonder what a hundred years from now will look like, not that I'll be here.

I loved the messiness, for want of a better term, of his work. He was such a master technically, but his compositions seem purposefully messy. It's like he cropped a lot of the pictures in the wrong place, just slightly. Or like he was trying to juxtapose the beautiful with the mundane. Gorgeous ballerinas awkwardly bent, struggling to pull on tights.

The dimly lit backgrounds and the muted colors are what have inspired me for today. His paintings were in some ways almost other worldly. In these paintings I tried to convey the floaty, heavenly, innocent, but yet slightly haphazard theme of his work.

Thank you, Flux Pavillion....I Can't Stop.

Taking my own advice from the previous post, I decided I needed a little trip out of the house. Driving around has always been very cathartic for me. I usually have the windows down and the motion of the wind starts blowing my hair around. Something about this physical manifestation of fluid motion, starts to slowly translate into mental fluidity. There is something almost hypnotic about it. I start to think more deeply...almost like entering a meditative state. So after I had driven around for awhile, I came home and decided I would listen to some music...as the article also suggested. My youngest son is very good at mixing music and has been mixing and listening to a lot of dubstep over the last year. I have become a huge fan.   Today the result was this painting which I created while listening to a loop of I Can't Stop by Flux Pavillion.

Artist's Block...

I have got a serious case of artist's block going on today, and it is so weird because I have been on such a roll lately. My oldest son came home for a visit and we batted around some new ideas for awhile. I actually came up with some new stuff that I am pretty excited about. More about that later. But, after he left, nothing....probably a correlation there. In my search to unblock I came across an article by Jacques van Heerden on inspiredm.com, which suggests the following ways to unblock.

10 Ways to UNBLOCK your Creativity:

1.  Doodle in your sketchbook

2. Visit inspirational websites
3. Take a walk
4. Search for new fonts
5. Stop doubting yourself
6. Get away for a day or two
7. Take your work to the nearest coffee shop
8. Go out with some friends
9. Listen to some music
10. Follow some tutorials
                                                           

Here Kitty Kitty...

Happy 4TH, ya'll...my tribute.

Some Sweet Day We'll Be Together....

Ain't No Mountain High Enough...

You don't even know how much I love Diana Ross. So much that my girlfriends Ellen Rouse Werner and Sarah Snyder Hyle and I formed a Diana Ross cover group. We would entertain our friends at sleepovers with our rendition of Ain't No Mountain High Enough, Stop in the Name of Love (my personal favorite), Love Hangover, etc... I thougt she was GORGEOUS and I wanted to look just like her. I still do. There are a few problems with that, none the least of which is that I'm a little too pale.

Today, I am missing Lillie Jane something fierce and for some reason the song Someday We'll Be Together keeps coming to mind. As I was listening to this song on Youtube, I thought of all the great times I used to have with my girls, just singing along to this timeless music. So hope I get to see her in person one more time before she permanently retires. Last time I saw her was about 10 years ago in Atlanta, Ga.

The 1920's. That's What's Up...

I have always been fascinated with the 1920's, probably because my grandmother (the Lillie part of Lillie+Julie) was born in 1912. The clothes seemed to be more luxurious and artisitc then.  It seems as though there was even a sort of body language that demanded regard. I never get tired of looking at ads from this time period. Today, as I was preparing to draw, I ran across this wonderful, inspiring ad. Lately my interest has been in synthesising this era with a modern, clean, contemporary feel.

The Morning Pages...

I keep running across the book The Artist's Way.  A few months ago I began reading it and watching related videos on youtube. One of the tools the author suggests, is what she refers to as "The Morning Pages". In a nutshell, you write in long hand for 3 pages first thing every morning. The content of your writing is up to you. It doesn't have to be well written or even grammatically correct. That's not the point. The point is to purge all of the mental noise and clutter inside your head. Apparently this chaos can block your creativity.

When I first did this, reluctantly I might add, I was amazed at the results. What started out as a rant about how dumb this whole exercise was, ended with some serious purging of some things that had been deeply troubling to me. I ddn't  know how it happened. I thought it was a fluke. I tried it the next day, same thing. Next day, same thing. It's actually quite a painful excercise, but I am beginning to see it's a necessity if I want to get beyond where I am now....which is stuck, making loops around.

My father was diagnosed with cancer in February and I stopped doing this because life got too hectic. If ever there was a time I needed to do this exercise however, it would have definitely been through this period. So, I have decided it is time to start this back up. I dread it, but I also can't wait to see what unfolds. For the first time in a while, I feel a tiny twinge of excitement again, about what could be ahead. We'll see.

A Sketch a Day...

Okay, well here's the first thing you should know. I am a very PROLIFIC artist. I create and I create and I create. The only problem with that (and I attribute this problem to A.D.D. or perhanps the "artistic gene") is that I am always changing my "style" in some way or another.  I think people generally see my work as a certain "look", but like most artists, I always think my work could be better. And the thing is, it could be better. EVERYTHING could be. One of my biggest challenges comes in learning to love imperfection in my own work. 

For example, the piece below I did today, in a response to a new challenge I have given myself. I want to create a new piece every day. The above drawing was done on watercolor paper with a sharpie. I then took the black and white (or in this case, red and white, because I could only find a red sharpie) drawing and photographed it with my phone camera. It inherently gives it a bit of a grungy, grainy look that I love. Next, I uploaded the picture into photoshop and added color, darkened up outlines, played with the exposure, etc... The result is what you see above. Lately, I am all about synthesizing hand drawn with digital work. I like the look.

Hopefully,  for a while you will be see lots of drawings of this nature and a progression of some sort into some congruent "style" for lack of a better word. 

Thanks for looking...

TTFN