What a little meditation will do.

 

This lovely fowl was painted by me this afternoon using only a limited palette of Pan Pastels on black Stonehenge cold press watercolor paper. It took 23 minutes. It will take me much longer to edit the video for YouTube. 

It wouldn't have mattered if it had taken ten hours or twenty. Well I wouldn't have worked straight through but I was so engaged in the painting that I just didn't care about time. 

Today I picked up studying the Tao Te Ching and then did meditations I created based on the first three lessons. I didn't fall asleep as I usually do. I was alert. I went into the art room, brought out my materials and began. My first drawing of the chicken was too large but that didnt mater. I just tore off the sheet and traced it with white transfer paper. The paper is only 9 x 12 and i always draw larger than tthe reference photo.

Everything just flowed. The paper I chose was perfect. In fact I ordered more. This is now my go paper for pastels. I used my personal limited palette; a combination of the primary color palette and the Zorn palette. That means i added yellow ochre to the primary color palette. So easy to blend. Everything fell into place. And then I had to stop. It was done. I snapped photos at the end. Sprayed it with Degas workable fixative and walked away. 

I am definitely studying the Tao and meditating on it before I paint or draw in the future.

Click HERE to see the time lapse video.

Simplifying

 I have much more stuff than fits comfortably in my home but really because I am living with someone else's furnishings and it's just crowded. But I am simplyfing in different ways. I'm cutting back on social media; internet presence. I cancelled my website. It was more work than it was worth. I cancelled my Instagram account. I'm not sure what it was doing for me. I keep trying to cancel Pinterest but it just wont' go away so I'm ignoring it. I'm giving up the online teaching platform I've been using for just over a year. There's just too much work for too little return. It just sucks the joy out of teaching and art. I'll just post it on YouTube. YouTube is nice and easy. As long as I play by the rules they let me share my art. I gave up Twitter soon after I began because of 45 and all the mean spirited posts. There are probably other platforms I've forgotten but as long as I don't use them it's as if I dont belong.

I feel lighter already. I did decide to try my hand at YouTube reels. What a cool exercise to create art in 60 seconds. Flash Art. I've been practicing. 

What's Wrong With This Picture?

 

He's adorable, isn't he? It's not my best work. I'm not happy with it. I realized why. Well, what's really wrong is that I used a reference photo of a beautiful lion and while in the photo the lion was looking straight at me in the painting he's not.

Somehow in drawing the image I changed the angle of the face and he's looking up at me.

I'm also no happy with my technique. Most of the mane is okay but I really misjudged the coloring. I think it's time to go back to black and white for a while or maybe monochromatic pieces. Sometimes this just happens to me. Suddenly I can't make the colors work. I can't work the pencils properly and the Pan Pastels are not as up to the challenge as they should be. I have no idea what that means. 

I'll draw him another time.