A Long Time Away!

Wow, it's been a long time since I posted here! Just updating my website now, with the help of a friend. I'm just starting to get back into painting in acrylics (my greatest interest). I have been taking a break with lots of drawing, writing poems, reading... Other things not requiring quite as much movement. I've been sick lately, but hopefully I'll be feeling better soon.

I need to prepare a new painting for a local art show. I need help getting the wire attached, though. I'm really bad at crafty stuff.

Preparing for Alaska

Well, I'm going to be going on a trip to Alaska fairly soon so I'm trying to finish a lot of things up. I saw House on the Rock recently and might do some paintings inspired by that... I also need to do some more finalized photography that would be useful for slides. Tomorrow is my last acrylics class of this session.

I'm still reading a lot, but that's just very calming to me, no matter what my mood.

I really need to update the pictures on this website and maybe edit a few other things. I hope I have time for that soon.

Sorry I haven't updated in so long!

So I did take my art class and signed up for another. I'm learning a lot about color theory and different panting techniques, so even though it's stressful to try and complete a painting in a short period of time, in the end it's beneficial. I might eventually put up my still life "studies" up on my website. I do try to make them at least somewhat "complete." Some objects in the still lifes turned out to be harder to paint than I anticipated. I'm going to see if I can keep these art classes up, because there's always more to learn. Maybe eventually I'll move on to classes focusing on portraiture.

Ophelia

I've been having difficulty signing into this, for some reason...

I'm starting a painting of Ophelia from Hamlet because she is one of my favorite literary characters. It should be good practice in painting female figures (I'm sure I'll end up using myself/pictures of me as a reference, as usual). I haven't planned it out yet, though. I want to at least do a sketch first. Usually I only have a vague idea of what I want to draw or paint and I just see what happens and intuitively add and alter things as I see fit. I don't usually have much of a finished idea in my head. I won't this time, either, but I do intend to do a bit more planning than usual. It would probably help advance my technical ability, which is an important goal for me.

Ending of the Long Winter

I was sick with food poisoning this weekend. Lately I have been slowed down a lot, and hopefully that will change with this spring. I have a list of things I hope to soon start accomplishing. I also hope to sign up for an acrylics art class at the art league near where I live. That would just be something in April-May. I've been trying to find someway to do volunteering, but I can't find something that would be realistically possible for me so far. I get overwhelmed with too much stimuli and I don't have a lot of "practical" skills. Hopefully I'll find something soon.

I did manage to finish my second editing of my latest novel, but I'm still deciding on a (temporary) title. I need to do more research on literature genres because I have a very difficult time expressing to other people what I write. My style is largely based on what I find interesting, what I would like to read, and the language and interpretations are what matches the kind of things that really affect me. A lot of it is relatively stream-of-consciousness and incorporate areas or human traits I find interesting, though I often have a lot of mutual interpersonal misunderstanding.

I'll try to update again sooner. This winter has just been very unreal, dreamlike, and somewhat depressing to me. I dislike night-time.

Paintings of Female Faces

I have been sketching and have some more charcoal and conte to do some drawing, but I haven't been painting as much as I would like. I intend to do two more acrylic paintings of female paintings, with different color themes. My mother felt that two recent female portraits I did looked like "autumn" and "winter" so I want to create one for spring and one for summer as well.

I still have yet to experiment with prints. There are still a lot of things I'd like to learn about art, that I never learned officially due to taking very few art classes. Maybe I'll look up books on some of those topics.

Experimenting with Painting Different Subject Matter

Well, I haven't posted here in a few months, unfortunately. I have been experimenting with painting people more, since I don't have as much experience with that. So far it's going well. I also tried a seascape for the first time, and I like it, though it will take practice. I wish I had people to model for me. I guess there are a few people that could, provided they didn't get bored:-)

I've been very tired and lethargic this season, I assume from how dark it is all the time. I'm glad it's finally snowing; it makes things much more cheerful.