Oh, sure. SURE. I was happy when I purchased some cheap super-fine-line brushes and india ink to experiment with. Sure, I was happy to have an idea come to me that I liked, an idea that came all at once and combined my adoration of animal/bird guides and my love of making shit up. Sure, I was even sort of happy with the initial brush drawings!
Then….I decided to play with watercolor on top of it. Oh, late-night decisions. Why do you always insist you’re right? I started, and realized too late that most of my watercolor tubes were dried up and hard, thus limiting my pallete to an aggravating extent that ruined any hint of depth that I might have pretended to try to achieve. Then I remembered that, honestly, I kind of suck at any liquid applications of color, and I always have. Oh, angry night. I don’t hate these nearly as much as I did the night that I finished them by fucking them up. Nevertheless, there is one panel that you will never see because it’s still too shameful to share. *hard, cranky sigh*
In any case, these photos actually look nicer than the finished drawing things. It’s the lighting. Oh, sweet, mellow, dining room light!
9 comments
Oh Dingey
Your late-night decisions are screaming for you to illustrate a children’s book, and they are right. These are marvelous! And I NEVER use that word, so it must be true. Don’t stop!
you only say that....
…because you haven’t seen the disaster that was “The Belted Queen Swisher” page.! That poor bird. ANYWAY! Thank you for the encouragement. I’m realizing that I’m not nearly as enraged at these as I was right when I finished them. I’m still not entirely happy with the coloration decision, but I think it has more to do with not experimenting with the watercolors on something less “final” before slopping it onto some drawings that I already was pretty happy with, and with realizing a little too late that I actually only had a couple tubes of colors to work with and they weren’t exactly the colors I had in my head and they weren’t even the right colors to try to mix together to MAKE the colors in my head.
I WILL! I WILLL KEEP TRYING! I really like drawing with the teeny size “0” liner brush and india ink! And I’ll try to get some fresh watercolors and a fresh attitude about them.
me & thee, tree
The non-Friday leppocheckers. Lord how the mighty have fallen. FFFFFFacebook!
But look at how many views!
The internet is all fractured. It seems like as soon as there were other things to do, the decline began. Of course, part of it is that most of us can’t spend all day on the computer anymore. I delayed replying to this post because I wasn’t logged in (lame!) and I think your drawings look wonderful. I do understand the tension between what is and what you thought you were making. Happens to all of us, all the time, it seems. Isn’t that the source of unhappiness, according to Buddha?
These make me happy. Happy
These make me happy. Happy happy. More! More! More!
These are so fun, and I want
These are so fun, and I want to see more! I especially like the mud-whistler. I am at a standstill on my own project. I realized that at different times of the month there is qutie a dfference in how I percieve color, so now I am looking at this painting thinking, “What was I thinking?” whereas a few weeks ago I couldn’t believe how beautiful it was. So, stupid hormones. I am drifting away from it (painting), but hope to drift back over to it soon. Thank you for sharing these with us!
Drift back, nancy, drift back!!!
Those colors were beautiful, at least what I saw of them. Trust your color, Nanners! TRUST YOUR COLORS!
and....
…if I made something that makes Cookie happy, I like it better than I did before. I don;t know how he’s writing from beyond the grave. I seem to remember seeing some sort of obituary for him posted on last weeks dinner forum…by funyuns of all people?!
Rufous Arboreal Shrieker
I feel like that!