Last week I had sick kiddies home from school & kindy, almost every day a different combination of them, it started as head colds [no doubt from the swinging weather] for all of us & ended in a nasty gastro for the two school girls. So I played nurse all week. Not so fun.
But in between all the 'nursing' & family cooking, there were moments when I had children resting watching movies or sleeping & I had snippets of time where I could escape to the studio [a few metres away!] to create.
I am bringing to life many of the sketches that I have been working on over time & I'm just loving it. Passion rekindled. Remember this little girl above from back here? She too started as an idea, progressed to sketch, then coloured up in digital on my iPad. Now she's on canvas, growing each day.
I've written before about my struggle between digital graphic work & then loosening up doing my painting back here. Thing is, I kinda love both. Creating digitally is alot quicker for me & there's instant gratification & sense of accomplishment. For someone not very patient, its a pretty cool medium. I can sketch something up pretty fast. There's no drying time.
And I am more than happy with the simple whimsical stuff I am producing. Here's an older one I found on my iPad today. Very quick sketch up & obviously needs more work before I put it to print but its a fun part of my process & sometimes when I spend more time on them, clean them up a little, I'm happy to put them to commercial print too.
As for a future direction in illustration [my dream] I want to make my illustrations by hand. Thats my passion. Personally I find it harder, more challenging, painstakingly slow [which ultimately means less work] but I have some sort of vision of what I can see myself doing someday. I don't know how, what, why or who might get me there but I'll keep working away as I know I will need to work extremely hard to make something, anything, happen.
I feel focussed & pointing in the right direction. I turn 42 this year. Gee that sounds old to only just be growing up & working out what I want to do, doesn't it? Its been a long journey that I would really love to document someday in a single post but the story hasn't got an ending yet. Some day.
And maybe I don't have to choose between digital & handmade? Maybe I just keep working away on both, doing whatever takes my fancy. Let the mediums feed off each other & I move forward in both.
Right now, I'm persisting with my painting, slow as it may be. This past weekend, I had Jeff home both days. That has been a rare treat this year. I spent no less than 7/8 hours painting each day, I haven't done that in a very long time. A little painting before lunch, a little after lunch, a snippet while dinner was baking away and then a big big art session once the kiddies were in bed. I was in the zone. I have lots of pieces on the go and 3 or 4 nearing completion.
Feeling better, the kids spent much of their weekend days in the studio with me & we are working out a nice rythym now where I can actually get more work done, while they work alongside me. That is another post on its own & I plan to do that soon. Parents wanting to do art with their kids might like some ideas on how we are making things work with multiple young children. There's plenty of resources for working with a single child in an art setting. Juggling multiple while doing your own art practice is something else entirely.
The kids have some beautiful creations in progress & I look forward to sharing more. Below I have chosen just a couple. The big girls are busting to do some blogging & more art sharing but we are always left short of time. Do we play, make art, relax or blog? Blogging for them always falls to the bottom of the list & thats perfectly ok. We will get there. Blogging for me when everyone is asleep, is a much easier thing. And as much as I need to paint, I need to write too. So here I am.
This little gorgeous work in progress [above] is one of Mimi's paintings. She drew the girl herself & she's been working away at it layer by layer. I love that she took inspiration from my work. I'm her first art mentor! This is one of my favourite hairstyles for my painted girlies & my real human girlies too. I think its super cute & very Kawaii.
And I'll finish with this sweet little rainbow, can never ever have enough rainbows!
