Watercolor

"Watercolor"
colored pencil
19 x 22
Originally this was a watercolor that had remained unfinished. I wanted to try to redraw it so that I could change some things, but nothing worked. SO I ended up drawing right over the watercolor instead. The areas I liked I just replicated in pencil exactly, like the background. But I ended up changing most of the figures, refining and trying some new color techniques. It turned out better than I thought it would.

The Results

The results. He will be getting them done any day now if he hasn't already. I think it's going to look great. That brings the number of tattoos of art I've drawn to 7. 7 this year seems to be my lucky number.
The circle one is the one he finally described to me the right way. The one I put off as much as possible. The one in color was just an extra that I kept adding to. Which he loved. I like it the best, of course because I made it up entirely and had no prerequisites. It's given me some ideas for more.

The tattoo shop loved them. Said I could draw anything I wanted for them. Now if I could only get paid for drawing the stuff. Heh, that makes me feel good though. I always knew I could draw them, it's just the 'on people -forever' part, well that and the "test" - drawing Goofy on one girls ankle, she 'had' to have it. That killed it right there, made it not fun. I think if it had been anything more original I might not have balked. (sorry Eric) Tattoos have become so generic, retail almost. It takes something amazing to really catch my eye anymore.

Unless I could do only what I wanted, (gee, I'm not a spoiled only child am I?! lol) I'll let others do the inking. There are some AMAZING tattoo artists out there, it's just all the mediocre stuff that I can't stand. I tend to pick out every little flaw. I'd personally hate to make someone live with something I didn't think was perfect.

Hopefully Wednesday I'll get to see them! I'll take pictures.
Oh, in other news I've got a date for a photography day with my friend Jim Silvas finally in 2 weeks! I have so wanted to do this for a while. It's going to be fun.

This is why....

It's a good reminder of why I'm not working in a graphics business, doing advertising, painting murals or signs. And why I never followed through on the tattooing training. I'm no good at dealing with the expectations of other people when it comes to my art. To sum it up with a quote from my daughter Emily, age 4: "I want to do what I want to do!"

I pretty much hate having projects where you're attempting something and just going on a basic idea and can't read your customers mind! And they just give you a basic idea and tell you "oh anything you do will be good" Then you come up with something and it's just not it. It's just killing the creativity flow, which is making me panicky! I don't want to freeze up at this point, things are going so well!

It's funny because one piece is exactly what I do, the figures, I could whip it out quick if I had to and yet I've been procrastinating on it all day. Is it because I know it's no challenge so I'm just not interested?
I got a hell of a lot of other unartistic stuff done, things I've been putting off for months, so it's not all bad. And yet I haven't done much the last couple days on any of the art stuff. I look at them, work on ideas for the next "my stuff" pieces while I'm waiting for details on the 3 other tats lined up. But I don't feel like that's enough.

I've been pushing myself so hard this year, and it's working. I'm feeling a little too comfortable in the procrastinating arena. That hopefully is scary enough that I'm going to work on one of my pieces tomorrow night. It's a plan, If I can just pick which one!

Meanwhile I'm going to get this figure Tat done tonight, at least a rough done on it. You'd think I'd be excited about it. I was the first day, now this. I don't get it!

Puppetstrings
colored pencil 4 1/2 x 19

This is an old piece I finally finished off. It was based on one of my poems, at one point I decided to try to do illustrations for some of my poetry. This is probably the only one I like enough to post. I found the perfect frame for it which inspired me to finish it. It's the only one that has come close to the mood I wanted to create.

My poetry tends to be pretty dark. I used to write a lot, in college especially. There was enough dramatic stuff going on in my life that it seems like the way to get the good energy out was in my artwork, and the bad energy in my poetry. Most of it is scarily "emo" this is before that was even a term! But it helped me a lot back then to get it out of my system. Some of it is slightly embarrassing now since a lot of it revolved around a couple of people: one I could never ever forget and one I wish I could, as well as others. But one of the lessons in life is to remember such mistakes! (and such tragedies) So I don't let myself! Besides in order to do that I would have to destroy what I think are some of the best things I've written.

I'm working on posting my poems up on an old blog I've revamped for this purpose, but I want it all posted before I link to it. 100 + poems means that will take a while, but I feel like it needs to be somewhere besides sitting on a shelf in my studio. I don't know, those years were just so full of emotion, drama and choices to be made. If anyone reads them and can relate, maybe take something from them then it will be worth it.

Do I still write? No. Sometimes I think about it, but basically I am just not that depressed or angry person anymore. Originally how it worked to begin with was - if you hurt me, made me angry, made me feel sad, desperate or out of control I wrote about you, or the situation. After a point someone came along and actually made me happy and I just couldn't write anymore! I tried but those poems are just not even comparable, I just can't write happy stuff!
And now, So much more has happened since then, that I think I've developed other ways of dealing with such things. Believe me I have every reason to be able to write more lately, everything is out of control, but I can't reign it in. I get ideas, the random formations that could be a poem but I just can't put my mind in that place anymore, I can't add fuel to the fire, so I just pack it back inside. At this point denial proves a more useful tool.

Wavelengths

Wavelengths
19 x 22 colored pencil
about 46 hours total, wow I've gotten slow! used to be able to draw them in half that time, then again the technique has changed a lot since then!

Now I'm in that weird spot where I'm not sure what I'm going to start next. I've got some awesome ideas coming up, but nothing is jumping out at me yet. Give me a day or 2.

New work

Everything after this will be fresh off the drafting table. Now we are certainly up to date, and the pressure will be on to keep making new stuff. Though I have to say, it hasn't been pressure at all this year. I have plenty of people and things to inspire me, especially the people. Pretty damn cool year so far. Much better than the last one!

Netted
8 1/2 x 11
inks, colored pencil and white paint marker

This one took forever. For such a small piece. The next one is bigger, I'm trying to find a happy medium size -wise.

Lessons learned

well, I've learned a new thing or two today.

I've always thought, once I have one of the "people puzzles" sketched out I could just redraw it up to a larger size and it would be the same. I've even thought I could redraw the same basic outline again and just change the colorways = new picture. I've just discovered this does not work!

I'm not talking tracing, technically I could do that with each little figure, but that tends to get out of alignment too. So I don't like it and never do it.

So here I've been - rocking out , trying to resketch the watercolor one I wanted to redo and some other pieces into a larger size. And they are totally, completely different from the originals. On one I was trying to get the scale from smaller in the center to larger on the edges. - so it looks like it pulls inwards.
One isn't as small but is way larger in general, and the other, whoa, it's going to be trippy, it's big in the middle (the exact opposite) then it kind of bends in and out around the sides, and it's all radial symmetry (-pretty much there are always a few extras floating around in there. I don't like them too perfect.) I think it's going to be awesome I think.

This one is 8 1/2 x 11. I am just going to work on top of this original ink piece and see what happens since it is proving impossible to redraw to the size I would like it.




















Green Glow
8 1/2 x 11 colored pencil.
This is the completed piece.



















This is the other sketch I'm trying to figure out what to do with, if I can redraw it.
It's gel pens and ink so I can't simply pencil on top, won't stick. That's the other lesson learned today.
8 1/2 x 11
















So now I'm thinking about all the dozens of sketches in my books, I might as well try to make them their own pieces instead of thinking of them as only sketches to be redrawn, because obviously that's a lot harder to do than I thought. Which is good in a way. It's not something that can be easily replicated, like I've always thought. I end up making something entirely different each time.

So now I've got 4 things in the works right now, I must be out of my mind!