I really like the contrast of the colors in this picture. One of ,y favorite artists is VanGogh. I love the way he used shorts Burt’s if color to create a whole picture.i strived for a little of that here. I don’t know if I really succeeded or not. Oh well you know what they say, “If at first you don’t succeed try, try again.” or put another way practice makes you better. God does not want us to be quitters. He want us to run the race set before us until we reach the finish line.
The drawing prompt for today was basket. When I saw the prompt the first thing to pop in my head was all the years I spent delivering newspapers which was the inspiration for my drawing, “Bike and Basket.” I delivered newspapers as a kid with my friend and then for 26 years as an adult. The drawing prompt for today also invoked memories of these baskets my mom used to have filled with photographs of past memories. I think we all have a basket we fill with memories of each day.
Some of us have actual baskets or boxes where we keep physical photographs which in a lot of cases are never seen once they are put away, except for special occasions. In theses modern times our baskets have been replaced with SD cards or space on the Cloud of your choice. Thousands of memories are stored each day some or most of them still long forgotten. It seems no matter where we put our memories they are forgotten except on the day by a sheer happenstance a lost memory is retrieved. Then the time for reminiscing begins.
What is my point in all this. While I love the idea of photographs because they helps us to remember good times past with loved ones long gone or moved away. I also know we can’t be too caught up in taking every moment of every event in our lives lest we miss the most important thing, the time spent with those we love. So fill your baskets with memories, those trapped in our hearts for a lifetime first and those we keep as reminders when the ones trapped in our hearts start to fade into the past.
I have been creating art in one form or another for as long as I can remember. I decided to become an artist simply because I wanted to be cartoonist like Charles Schultz among others. I saw cartooning as a freedom from the constrictions I put on myself in trying to create the perfect painting.
A number of years later specifically in 2015 when my art life was at a standstill I decided to pick up a pencil and get a couple of art books and revive my love for art. Over the past two years I have had many up and downs with my art. I have created pieces in acrylics which I love working with and still use in my paintings but I have also turned back to drawing.
I decided when I was diagnosed with cancer last year I wanted to kick my art up a notch. I started my art challenge this year not to become a great artist but to try an expand on my art abilities. Over the past two months I have created pieces I am satisfied with, others I might rework for later blog entries and some, well lets say I am done with.
I have also discovered over the two months I would rather produce pieces in pen and ink that have more of a doodle feel to them instead of full fledged paintings. I will still produce paintings in acrylic because I love vibrancy of the colors but am going to head in a whole new direction with my art. The new name of the blog will be Daily Timeout to Doodle.
The whole point of this ramble is to remind you when looking back at your art life and forward to what you will create in the future stop worrying about trying to create the kind of art others may like but be faithful to yourself and create the kind of art you like.
As an artist I love to venture into new areas. One of those new areas is collage. I haven’t done many of them but I like assembling the various aspects of a collage and then painting over them with acrylics or pen. The challenge for today was to create a picture of a plant. I chose to do a orchid like flower over a collage of old newsprint and other paper assemblages. The piece is entitled “Red Orchid” and is the first of many more of these types of pictures I hope to create.
While I have come a long way on over a month and half of drawing I still feel I have a long way to go with my art. I would love to incorporate more color and take my drawings to the next level where my art is more artist worthy and less of a doodle. Today’s offering for the daily art/ drawing challenge is one based on shells. At first I was going to do sea shells but came across a picture of a “Giant Turtle and Babies” which I did in a simple pen drawing with highlights of color.
It took me a while to settle on what kind of drawing to do for today’s challenge which if you haven’t guessed by now is rocks. The piece entitled simple “Rocks” comes from a picture I took of a rock formation surrounded by flower I snapped in Montgomery County. I can’t say I am totally enamored with the final effort but I like the overall look.
Today’s challenge was to draw some leaves. I didn’t want to draw just a tree so I decided to draw just a couple of leaves with the city behind. The piece entitled “The Last Leaves of Fall,” looked different in my mind then how it turned out. I drew the piece and then highlighted it with pen and filled in some of the details with colored pencil. I then touched up the picture digitally. Someday in the future I plan to revisit it, maybe redo it in acrylics or pastels.
Today’s challenge was to draw a rainbow. I went through a number of idea with putting rainbows in different landscape scenes but thought to myself “how usual.” I decided to take a simple pen drawing of a women holding some balloons and add some color. The piece is entitled “Rainbow of Balloons.”
Today’s challenge involved drawing something silver. I started out thinking about doing a still life of some silverware but to me it was just to static. I enjoy movement or color in the paintings I create so I moved on and did a doodle entitled “Silver Goblet and Pink Flower. My wife told me it looked more like a wine glass so when you look at it envision a goblet. Not the fancy kind but like the one you get out on a lazy Sunday afternoon to have a sip of wine.
The Ugly Artist 