Coming Clean
When I began painting, I lovingly
would create a grid on a photo and with just as much care would recreate the
grid to scale on my watercolor paper.
I
would draw out my drawing. And because I was working from a photo I would
include way too much detail. The eye doesn’t pick up that much detail – mine
doesn’t anyway.
This
would take several hours, maybe a day or two. Sometimes it would become a
drawing instead of a painting.
It
was difficult to find a delicate balance of when to stop drawing and start
painting.
Then
I was introduced to projecting!!! What a time saver. I could quickly project
the photo onto the paper, no longer worried about proportions or scale.
And
so to this day I project. Cropping and no longer including detail, eager to get
the proportions in and develop the painting as I paint. Yet somehow I have felt
guilty about projecting for years. Thinking (that stinking, thinking) that
somehow this made me less of an artist.
This
summer I went to a SCVWS artist demo. Ted Nuttall a very talented and successful
artist. While giving his demo he casually mentioned that he projects. I felt as
if I had been released of my bondage. Only to quickly slide back into the guilt
and bondage.
I
want to learn how to draw and see again. To feel good about how and what I do.
I have a wonderful new online friend and muse Nancy Scoble who has gently nudged me
the past couple of mornings via email. Thank you Nancy.
The
other thing I have wanted to do is “The Artist Way” by Julia Cameron, to get
into a routine and to define a workspace. (The desk at the top of the stairs is
my new studio space. The light here is absolutely magnificent.) “Just do it!”
So at the very least I promise myself to
do a sketch everyday through the end of the year. Everyday posting my sketch
and really learning how to use my new Samsung s5 camera phone, to work through the
“Artist Way” and share with you whatever may come up.
So
today’s sketch is of a left shoe overlapping no erasing and a little projected
piece of “The Palace of Fine Art”
SF, CA.
Keeping the brushes wet,
Teresa
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