Week Two of Artist Recovery

My first week painting for Get Your Art On got me really excited and I produced a few pieces. So when the second weeks assignment was posted I felt really inspired by the new project, which was to be influenced by a particular artists style, or colours used, or subject matter...whatever, and apply one or some of those aspects to your own painting.  

One artist that really inspires me is Dale Auger, a Sakaw Cree, from Canada's First Nations.  What I love about Dale's work are his colours and stunning imagery. I love the graphic quality to his work, the shapes and seeming simpleness...I could stare at his works all day. 

My Week Two Painting Process

Beginning of my painting, when I had a set image of what I wanted in my head...

Yup, just having fun painting away, still liking what I was doing...feeling good but it was at this point that I lost what it was I was doing and didn't know where to go with the painting.

So I turned up the reggae music and stopped thinking about it and started using some chalk to play around on the surface of my piece to see what happens...My original plan had been to have some sort of face in the composition but I didn't include that in my initial mapping out of my piece, so then trying to place a face in now was proving to be difficult.  Lesson learned: try and work up your composition as much as possible before you focus in on one aspect of your piece. 

Now I'm starting to really like where my painting is going, kind of just going with the flow but painting with a purpose, not dibbling and dabbling with no idea. 

Opps, back down to the bottom of the U curve again, what did I do...urg!  I like the ravens but not how I addressed the face and bodice....I'm at this stage right now with this piece, so as I'm writing this I'm actually avoiding getting back into my studio to work through this...I'm so tired. 

What I do find helpful is to look back at some of the pictures I've taken along the way and if I need to I can see some of the elements I'd lost that I can pull out again.  Digital pictures are a great way to see how  you develop your paintings and can be used as reference for stuff you'd painted out and wished you hadn't.

Heading back to the studio to see what I can do with this now.