Feelin Sisyphus

I finally hammered out the figure on my latest painting and it's ready to post. It's another one of my emotion paintings, where I try to tap into a feeling and express it through my art.

I'm not sure if I should explain my feelings behind them or just leave it up for personal interpretation. When posting the last two I explained the scenarios that brought them about, perhaps I'll let this one stand on it's own.

This will also be going up on my new Deviantart page. Everybody's doing it right? Those who don't want to bother designing their own page anyway.

Brief Interlude to Politics

Do you ever have so many topics you want to talk about that you can't pick just one? Do you then subsequently ignore the very thought of posting anything because of that indecision?

No? So I'M the crazy one here.

How about that Barack Obama then? I voted on Super Tuesday for the one candidate that inspired hope for the future in me. Watching him give speeches fills me with shades of Martin Luther King Jr., FDR, Kennedy. He gives a sense of the common person working towards something bigger than us all. He always says "we" when talking about his accomplishments. He talks about a more transparent government and you don't feel bad about believing that he's telling the truth. He's for network neutrality and is one of the most technologically savvy candidates running.

I can only hope Hillary keeps shooting herself in the foot trying to paint him in a bad light. He's admitted to experimenting with drugs and apologizes for his mistakes. How do you fight someone who comes off as so... human?

So I indulge in hope that for once, come November, I don't have to pick the least deplorable candidate but that I get to vote for someone I would genuinely support in office.

Yes we can.

Study of an Artist in the Making

Here's the third, and final, assignment from the first section of the book. A self-portrait. I can see bits I dislike but overall I don't think it came out too bad. It's been a while since I sat down and looked in a mirror for a forty five minutes and drawn myself.

Start at the Very Beginning

...I've heard it's a very good place to start.

When I decided last year I was going to start towards an art career in earnest I also realized I needed a better foundation and grounding in the principal skills. I visited a few art sites and messageboards and noted some of the books that were suggested. One particular book mentioned was one I'd heard of previously so I went and picked up a copy, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. (There's a link in my currently reading section)

The best thing about this book over many art books out there is it helps you re-train your brain. When most people draw they sketch what they THINK they see, which are shorthand symbols for eyes, lips, hair, etc... I learned how to retrain my mind back in my high school art classes but it never hurts to get a fresh start and a new perspective on techniques.

The book also talks about the trancelike state you seem to enter when you're hyper-focused on a project, where hours pass by like minutes. It discusses ways of passing more quickly into that phase from our normal analytical state of mind.

I've just started the book and I'm doing the pre-instruction projects. My "before" and "after" pictures won't be quite as dramatic as some pointed out by the author but I still hope to see a marked improvement by the time I finish the book.

Here's my "draw your hand" exercise: