February ‘21 Check-in: Skulls and Sketchbook-ery
Started off this month with the best of intentions; but I’ll be honest., February was a bit of struggle. Dealt with a lot of self-doubt and low confidence in my abilities and it sucked all the joy out of creating for me for a little while. Still -I tried to power through it, and I still managed to get some stuff done; including finishing an illustration, which is a rare occurrence in itself!
And I’m still miraculously on target with filling this sketchbook - even if I’m not entirely happy with all the pages here. Trying to just draw and not judge everything I do to impossibly high standards. Trying!
(Click to view larger - apologies if the light is all over the place on these photos, I have a very small apartment with a very large south-facing window, so I’m at the mercy of the time of day and the sunlight - or lack of it!)
Did more from observation this month, which I’m pretty pleased about! I’m getting more comfortable with sketching from life when I’m out and about now - looking forward to doing it more once lockdown is lifted and the city starts opening up. (I didn’t realise my trusty “pencil fixative” - i.e. cheap hairspray - would make biro ink bleed through the page like that. Oops.)
The first two paintings are in gouache and I was NOT enjoying myself with them - had a tantrum with the paint after the second still life, and decided to repaint it in oils and oh… The difference was night and day... I haven’t painted in oils in ages and I’d forgotten how much I adore using them! It’s possibly the only thing that got me excited to work this month - I’ll definitely be trying to squeeze in as much pushing paint around as I can before I go back to work!
Still trying to improve my understanding of underlying facial structure - with a little foray into exploring the skull as a 3D structure and trying to turn it’s form in my head. It also seemed like a good excuse to play a bit more with oils and light/form there!
And to round off - faces, faces, faces!
Over the past few days I have felt much better - I’m not sure if its the longer days and the extra sunlight we’ve been getting, the glimpses of spring, the fact we have an idea of when “normal” might be, or giving myself permission to just not be productive and creative for a few days - possibly all of the above. But I’ve felt happier and more hopeful, and some excitement to create is coming back, so I’m feeling cautiously optimistic about March.
A little thankyou to everyone that’s been taking a peek at these - I half didn’t expect anyone to be interested in posts like this, and I’m kinda just making them for myself but it’s really nice to know there’s an audience for this sort of stuff too!
See you all next month!