Several months ago, I was telling my art buddy C. that I wanted to stop tracing other people's art to begin my paintings.
It's a fine point actually, because sometimes all I had was some faint outline of the thing I wanted to paint, but it made sure I had proper proportions and scale. Now that I think about it, those lines were like training wheels.
As I look at the little clothesline of paintings here by my computer, I only have one (the pear) up there that I traced.
[Alexa gets the close up view all the time.] :-)
So without over thinking it... and I am SO very prone to overthinking... I have actually been practicing the very thing I wanted to do! And that's the key word. Practice.
There's a little game that artists play with their creative pursuits. It's a kind of hide and seek game where you send your inner critic off into the back yard while you count to ten or fifty or one hundred and fifty, whatever it takes to give you time to do your work without him looking over your shoulder. And after a while you begin to realize that EVREY painting is a practice painting. I learn something every time. Even if the resulting piece has many flaws, each one gives you information. Knowing what NOT to do is just as important as knowing what TO do!
With all that in mind, here's what I tried yesterday, with limited success. I learned that I need to have SOME inner idea about flower shapes. I'm going to work on that. In the meantime, here's 'Wednesday Practice in Quinacridone Rose'
:-)
