"Ditsy Leaves" - Color Throwdown Challenge - Digital Repeating Pattern

Time for another colour palette challenge from Color Throwdown. I always intend to do these, but I rarely get around to them in time. I spend too much time trying to decide what I'm doing, and suddenly a week has gone by. This week's theme is green, yellow, black and white.

I wanted to make sure I submitted something, so here's just a quick ditsy leaf pattern. I'm starting to practice patterns where I have to arrange different elements and make them look like a balanced repeating pattern. This is a lot easier now that I have a Wacom tablet and can draw in additional elements to fill spaces rather than sketching on paper and scanning them in as I had to do before.

"Ditsy Leaves", Digital Repeating Pattern, September 2015, 15x15 Inch

It's still a bit rough and I might go back to clean it up later, but I'm pleased with the technique and look forward to doing it again with more complex pattern elements. Look forward to some paisley and floral patterns in the near future. 

"Space Highway" - Digital Mandala

Talking about your own art can be one of the most difficult parts of the process. I've always wanted to share what I'm working on with others, but coming up with a spiel to go along with it tends to trip me up. It feels strange to just post an image with no accompanying explanation, but I find there isn't much to say. I'm not a very conceptual artist, so even coming up with a title can be tricky. And while I like to be a positive and uplifting person, talking about how much you like your own art leaves you balancing the fine line between obnoxiously self-confident and annoyingly self-deprecating. It can be hard to convey the fact that you're happy with your work (sometimes more than others) but you see there are things you'd like to improve upon and areas you'd like to explore. Except in that one exact sentence, and that hardly lends itself to a second blog post.

My favourite art bloggers seem to have galleries that they exhibit in, art-related businesses that they run, sponsors to talk about, or ongoing personal projects to discuss. It's easy to compare yourself to someone who has spent many years cultivating their online presence and find yourself falling short. But it's important to look at the things they do well and create those traits in yourself. 

I wonder that I don't have any projects to work on, but I don't start them. I get distracted easily by other ideas, which makes it very difficult to work in series or finish a long term project. But I intend to change that. For the last few months, I've been planning to have some things manufactured with my designs and sell them online. In a manner that is most unlike me, I've made concrete steps towards my goal, rather than planning things in the abstract until I lose interest. I know I have to see actual results, such as sales of products that I've created, so that I know the effort is worthwhile and I should keep going. The next step is to decide which artwork should adorn my first item and have the sample made up and sent to me.

I've been working on several abstract designs that I can have printed on handbags. So far, this is my favourite. Whether this ends up being my first printed design or not, I still haven't decided. But it's nice to be making art that I can feel proud of again.

"Space Highway", Digital, September 2015

Ponytail Woman - Portrait by Renee Dillon

Okay, starting to get back on track now. Here's my post for the 4th of May (even though today is the 6th, but whatever, I'm getting to it). Believe it or not, this is drawn on lime green cardstock, which just appears grey because of a bad photo taken on a stormy day. Light is funny like that. 

Laughing Man - Lineart Portrait by Renee Dillon

This one is just lineart, as I haven't had time to sit down with my paints for the last couple of days. Laughing is an interesting facial expression to try and capture.

Vortex - Acrylic Paint and Ink Portrait by Renee Dillon

The unexpected arrival of a friend in town made this post a little late, but I'm still hoping to get something up every day in May.

I was going to go with a green background for this one, then get a bit distracted by other colours that were still on my palette and then this happened. Next time I'll experiment with how a single colour background looks. I still think I prefer the person staying in one colour.

The Curly Haired Lady - Acrylic Painted Portrait by Renee Dillon

After the slow blogging month I had in April, I've decided to try posting daily again, like I was doing in January. Unfortunately there isn't another 30 in 30 challenge going on this month, but hopefully I'll still be able to motivate myself. It's all about developing habits, and not letting myself get distracted by other projects.

My theme for this month is simple, graphic, pop art style portraits on 12x12 scrapbooking cardstock. I'm still working on exactly what I want to do with them. I like the simplicity of just the lineart, but I think I like the background to be painted a different colour to add a bit of contrast. In this piece, I decided to add a bit of colour to the lips, eyes and jewelry, to see how I liked it.

For today's portrait, I was inspired by this weeks Color Throwdown colour palette - bright pink, lime green and sky blue. Excuse the dodgy photograph, the colours are much brighter in real life. I'll take a better picture with my camera in the morning. But for now, it's here, and that will do. Not sure what possessed me to do pink for the eyes instead of green, but it is interesting. Experiment, try new things sometimes.

Catching Up on Blogging for April

Looks like I'm going to have to give myself a more structured blogging schedule, or I get distracted and fall behind. We're already nearly all the way through April without a blog post, and that's ridiculous. I have been working on a few things, just moving on to something else before I get around to blogging about them.

This month, I've been poking around in thrift shops, looking for homewares that I can dress up with a bit of paint. For some reason I started looking at interior design blogs and I've become a little obsessed with shelves covered in pretty things. Now I want to make colour coordinated covers for all of my books and fill my shelves with fun, quirky objects. I've also been trying to clear away things I don't want or need anymore, so I can easily find the things I do need, like certain art supplies, or a free bit of desk to sit at and draw.

I've also decided that I want to extend my reference library. The internet is invaluable when you're looking for some inspiration about what to draw, but there's something to be said about just sitting down with a book filled with photographs to find something too. I've been looking for a good reference book for different types of flowers for a while. So far "Dig Deeper" by Meredith Kirton is looking like a good option for me. I also bought "The Encyclopedia of the Horse" while I was thrift shopping, and I'm so excited that I found it. 

My goal now is to post a new blog post at least once a week, preferably on Monday. I'd like to say more about what I'm up to at any given time, so I can look back on this blog in future as a little time capsule. It would be nice to have reminders of little moments that might otherwise be forgotten.

I'll probably come back to actually add pictures to this post later, but for now, I'm feeling creative. Go make some art.