Art is Life/ Life is Art

I Love a Good, Rainy Day

Here is something that you might not know about me. I LOVE rainy days, and I seem to have passed on this genetic predisposition to my nine-year old daughter as well.

Why do I love them? Because rainy days give permission for us to take the time to go inside ourselves- to be contemplative- to make art.

If it were rainy day every day, I wouldn't be so enthusiastic about them, and they have spoiled many a plan, but when there is no plan, or one that is not firm, a rainy days tells me, "You can take some time for yourself." "You can wallow for a little while in your art-ness."

When the sun comes out, it is hard to want to stay inside. There is a lot to relish in being outdoors, and art can be made there too, but there's nothing quite like a good, rainy day to help you decide to pull out some art stuff and get at it.

I am putting art first this morning, even though there are a hundred more "productive" things I probably should be doing. If I start with those, the time to do art will dwindle away, and my mind will be filled with the busy-ness that comes with all the tasks at hand. So for two hours, I am not going to answer the phone, and I will indulge myself. In honor of this rainy day....

What I'm Working on Today

Sunday, I finished a digital manipulation, made up of four photos that were part of this past weekend's WDE on the Wetcanvas! site.

The four pictures were of a real lioness, a boy hugging a bronze lion statue, a blonde girl viewing a gorilla behind plexiglass, and a panoramic vista of the Smoky Mountains.

I put them all together with a Narnia-ish nod, and called it "The Lion, The Kids, and the Smokies!"

I think I will use this as inspiration for my rainy day art morning, and I want to finish my sketchbook page that featured my Rosetti interpretation.
More later, once I have something to share.

This the start of my drawn version of the above photo creation.

Beginning with a gesture study of the movement in the drawing and finding the positioning of the basic shapes. I have now started to develop the drawing, by adding somr of the features, mainly for positioning at this point.

I have spent about 15 minutes on this so far, and am working in graphite.




In this next step, I have another half hour or so into the drawing, adding color and definition with watercolor pencils. I am using the tiniest bit of moisture to smudge the color of the pencils, rather than trying to do a wash at this point.

Water beads up on the Moleskine paper, which won't work well for this part of the image. It would obsure the detail in the face and hands.
I will probably use a wash for the mountains in the background, though.

Here, I realize that some things are not quite right with my lioness: when I made her head smaller, I somehow elongated her neck. Well, I suppose it is OK, since this is fantasy, and just a study (which is why we do studies!!)

I have started adding in washes, and am still using the watercolor pencils on top. I have about 2 hours total into the drawing so far. It looks to be a little over halfway finished to my eyes, so I will keep plugging along, but need to get to some of my real world household tasks today, so will have to come back to this later on. Until then....



Here is the final sketchbook version. I tried to fix some of the proportional issues, and gave a lot more detail to the lioness, the boy's shirt, finished the girl's clothing, and scenery. Maybe this will make it to a final painting when I can get back to it.