Brief Catch Up, Trip and More

Posted on November 29, 2024 by SusanG

The last few years of this blog have been very hit or miss, as you know if you’ve been reading it. Or trying to when I do publish a post. I have been so hit or miss that without actually looking I would venture that several posts have started with or contained some sort of apology for the length of time or delay since the previous post along with a promise to do better. As tempting as it is to do that again, I’m going to do my best to refrain, from doing either. Instead, I’m going to share with you why it has been a challenge to keep up with the posts.

Before the pandemic lockdowns of 2020, I was going to a local blues jam regularly and it generally gave me plenty to write and post about. And I did that. But then we went into lockdowns and isolations and I didn’t know what to write about. Should I shift my focus to this idea or that idea? I even tried. I wrote a series of posts about the idea of manufactured need. Most of it didn’t feel right enough to keep posting about. So my posts would be varied and mostly catch up posts on things I was doing at the time. Along the way there was more art in the posts than music but I still wasn’t sure about what to write about. What to share. What you would want to read about. 

I still don’t know for sure. But I’m going to take a stab at something and see how it goes. Hopefully you will enjoy reading the posts and I can get more in the habit of posting regularly again. It’s going to take some work though. 

Before I get to that, I have an update on that trip to Germany. It happened. I had a great time. I was happy to be in Germany, and super excited to get to try to use the German that I’ve spent so long trying to learn. It wasn’t perfect but it was enough to get by in a few cases. And even enough to get positive comments from some of my colleagues. 

As a reminder, the trip was for the day job. I spent my first week there working in the office and meeting with colleagues in different areas so I could get a better understanding of technologies that are being used and how they might be leveraged in the US offices. I enjoyed meeting my German colleagues and having conversations with them either over dinner or lunch in the cafeteria. All in all they were great, welcoming and helpful. 

The second week of the trip I took vacation and was mostly on my own, though a couple of my colleagues did check on me to make sure I’d made it to my destinations since I was traveling by train for the first time. I went to Hamburg for a couple of days and then Berlin before returning to my starting location to catch the plane home. Hamburg was cool, I didn’t see everything I thought about seeing due to me not properly planning much. I did see some cool things though. One was the museum of arts and crafts. They had an exhibit about the history of water and it’s usage. That was quite interesting. I also found the Chocoversum. The chocolate museum. I have a new appreciation for mosquitos. I also made it to the viewing platform of the Elbphilharmonie, though not the full tour. That was quite a view. 

From Hamburg I went to Berlin. I rode the hop on hop off bus and got to see many of the well known places. I did not hop off to see the museum island. Though it is something I would go back to see. I had arrived through the main train station and noticed that it was four floors but hadn’t really registered how very big the place is until taking the bus ride past it. I have more appreciation for the gentleman who pointed me to the correct exit for grabbing a taxi because, wow. The station is huge. I ended up being in Berlin on a holiday, reunification day as it turns out. For those that don’t know, holidays in Germany are much like Sundays in that there is very little open. Transportation, restaurants, and museums are pretty much it. All good. I booked the trip to Sanssouci Palace in Potsdam for that day. That was fun. What made it especially fun was our guide. She turned up in style with black faux leather pants, a bright orange puffer jacket, a small backpack, and 40+ years of tour guide experience. 

As I said, it was a great trip. And I have to thank my colleagues because they helped me with booking my trains and my hotels in Hamburg and Berlin. I also learned a lot about how I would travel again. Starting with, a smaller bag, and even two bags instead of just one. I had one very large bag and it was really too much for me to manage well. I did it but, I would have managed better with smaller bags. And, even though I could have got all my goodies in it coming back I was concerned it would have been overweight as just the one bag so I purchased another smaller one for all the goodies. Some of the other things I would have done differently include, plan a little better, choose a central location and take more day trips, even if that meant an early train there and a late train back. I also now have a better idea of what I would want to see and even how to go about finding some off the beaten path sites and attractions. 

And for the question some ask, ‘would I go again?’ Absolutely. I plan to. I just haven’t decided when. I felt very comfortable in Germany and particularly enjoyed Berlin. I liked seeing the contrast of the cold war era architecture next to the restored older architecture. And it was in Berlin where I found the Caran d’Ache store for art supplies so that certainly helped. 

The trip was quite impactful for me on a personal level as well as day job professional level. Personally there was all that I’ve shared as well as the general impact travel tends to have and more. Professionally, day job speaking, I came back with a lot of work that needs to be done. Some I knew about, some was hinted at, and some had been set aside, all of it big projects and undertakings. And because of that, as well as other work that was underway when I left on my trip, the day job has generally been taking it’s toll. Which can make it difficult to find the energy, physical and mental, to work on the things I want to work on and to create the things I want to create. And yet, things are still happening.

I’m making some changes to my art store. I’m setting up a gift shop feature so you can find the merchandise items easier. And I’m setting those up so you can just order them. You won’t need to worry about if they are going to look good when you get them or any thing like that. I’m setting the art on the items in a way that I want the art to be viewed. This should make things much easier for you. As with the day job, there is a lot to still do here. And there is a lot more that I want to do so expect some incremental adjustments as I work to improve things. And yes, there will be more art added.

I have three pieces of art back from the photographer and a couple of pieces that I can scan or have scanned that will be appearing on the store soon so look for those. I did some Candy Corn art for Halloween. That was fun. I also have another watercolor painting finished that will need a trip to the photographer. And at a suggestion of one of my Taekwondo friends I’m working on some Candy Cane art. I’ve done more than one piece. I did one in watercolor first and that will need to go to the photographer. Another one is pastel and small enough that I can scan it. And I’ve got one more I want to do that I’m planning to do in watercolor as well. That’s not all that I’ve got in mind. I am planning the next Taekwondo painting. I may do something different with it and I’m excited about it. I have another painting that I want to do, I’ve done part of the sketch for it, but that one I want to surprise someone with so you’ll have to wait to hear more about it once it’s done. And I have another one I want to do that I think I’m going to try acrylics, again. I will need to be patient. 

So yes, the trip was good and now there is lots of art related stuff happening. Art being created and the store getting updated. Maybe that will give me more to write about. Cheers!

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I Get to Go to Germany

Posted on September 19, 2024 by SusanG

I think I mentioned in my last post that I have a trip coming up for the day job. There are a couple of cool things about this trip and the coolest is probably that it means I get to go to Germany. That’s where the ‘home office’ for my day job company is. I’m excited. 

And here’s where you get a little background. When I was a wee child, my biological father was in the US Military (Air Force to be specific). We were stationed in Germany for three years. I was just old enough to remember bits and pieces of it. Things like the ironing lady Frau Brindel. Or the German teacher who came into our classroom periodically to teach us German. I also remember bits of camping trips, and trips to castles. I even remember a little bit about picking some plums. Mostly I remember a big bug that came out of the sack when we got home. I don’t like bugs. 

We returned stateside and I remember we got a care package of sorts that contained Gummi Bears. At the time, these weren’t easy to come by in the states, and they were a favorite. They still are. I can’t wait to get some “REAL” Gummi Bears. Yes, I know I’m mixing my German and English. Which leads nicely into, I have been trying to learn German since I was a teen. The first high school I went to didn’t offer it, just Spanish and French. The second high school did and I jumped at the chance to take it. The fun bit, was that my German teacher was the husband of my sister’s Kindergarten teacher. 

Anyway Herr Z not just taught us German he told us about the year he spent teaching in Germany. Unfortunately, I only got two years under his tutelage before I graduated and started trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I took German in community college two more times, they were two different schools. I finally got determined after working at my day job for many years and seeing ‘home office’ emails in both German and English, and I started with an online course to learn German. This is one of the best things that came out of the pandemic lock down. I got consistent. I did the Duolingo course and even finished it. 

This past summer, just before I finished the course, I was at multi-day meeting for the day job and a couple of our colleagues had been invited. I got brave and made a few comments to one of them in German which caused further conversation and a generous offer to practice with me on video chat. And now, I get to actually go to Germany, and have an opportunity to practice my German even more. I’m excited, it will be an adventure. 

Not only will I be going for the day job, I will be staying longer to do a little touristing and sightseeing. I’ve narrowed down my destination for that time to Hamburg, with the possibility of a short trip to Berlin. But with the recent weather, I’m not sure if I will be wanting to change any of those plans. I was just reading that both Berlin and Hamburg are artist cities, like say New York in the States. So that will be cool. 

I found that Hamburg has a big concert hall called the Elbeharmonia (I think I got that right). It’s not even ten years old. It is a concert hall built on top of an old warehouse and the top part is designed to look like waves of glass. And the photos of the inside of the main concert hall look just amazing. The acoustics have got to be awesome. I’m hoping to get to do a tour of the place much like I did when I saw the Sydney Opera House. 

There are so many places to see and choices of things to do that I’m still a little overwhelmed by the possibilities. Fortunately, some of my colleagues have agreed to help my make some decisions, and maybe even have some recommendations. I’ll be taking my camera, and a sketchbook. I expect to have lots of pictures and hopefully some will be art worthy. 

So that will be my adventure the next couple of weeks. I’ll post some pictures on Instagram as I go so if you follow me there you’ll get to see them before I get them here. But do come back because I’ll post a bit about the trip here, when I get back. 

And quick before I go, I’ve included some pictures of some things I’ve worked on recently. Some will be going up on the store soon and some will need a trip to the photographer when I finish them.

Cheers!

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To Share or Not

Posted on August 20, 2024 by SusanG

Yet again, I have started this post more than once and I am starting over again. Sometimes I’m just not satisfied with the thoughts that I first think I want to post and sometimes by the time I get around to reviewing them, they are irrelevant, or slightly out of date. While the previous attempts are not totally irrelevant, they are a little out of date, and not really what I think I want to say. So here we go again. 

Occasionally I like to do a bit of experimenting. With my blog and more especially with my art. I’m always looking for the right way to create whatever vision or idea I have. Sometimes that is with pastel, sometimes it’s with watercolor, or pencil, or acrylic ink or paint, sometimes it’s something completely different, though not usually.  

I’ve had some ideas for things I want to create that I thought should be done in acrylic paint for a variety of reasons and perceptions. So I got out some acrylic paints and started trying to work with them. I’ve tried oil in the past too, I chose acrylic this time for the ease of cleaning up after. Anyway. When I got ready to start trying to get used to the paints and figure out how to work with them, I got stuck. I needed a way to practice but I didn’t want to use any of my canvas or canvas boards because they are too “precious”. They are more expensive and more permanent so they are not suitable for practice. This was my thought process. And it was holding me up. Until it occurred to me that I could use watercolor paper to practice on. It’s not as permanent feeling, not quite as expensive, and takes up less space. Hooray.

So I set about trying to get accustomed to painting in acrylic. I had some good results and some not so good results. In all cases, I learned something. I’m not sure I really liked the experimenting. It was a little frustrating, though, I did have one that came out really nice. I wanted to post it on my store to share with everyone because I really like it. But, as it is an experiment and on paper and small, I hesitated for a while. A couple of weeks. Then I finally decided that it is still art. It still looks really cool and I should share it. Who am I to judge what others might like, especially since I like it. And I’ve posted a couple of other experiments that turned out to be pretty cool so why not.

I think it seems counter to everything we are taught, about how we should find our medium and niche and stick with those and become masters of them, to decide to experiment with something and share the cool outcome even if you aren’t sure whether you will ever do another piece that way. So I often get stuck on ‘do I take the time to experiment’ or ‘should I share my experiment that came out really cool’. And I hear a lot of other artists worry about the idea of finding a niche or a signature style or theme. And I think this is what has always frustrated me. The expectation that we must pigeonhole ourselves in order to be accepted or understood or appreciated. I have diverse interests and skills, and I know others that are the same. It seems a shame to not get to use some of it just because we can’t be marketed if we are “all over the place”. It’s a bit of a frustration for me, but, I see more and more people sort of ignoring the efforts to be pigeonholed and just going ahead and doing all the things they want. And it’s working. So I guess the answer is ‘to share’.

With that. Here’s a bit of what I’ve been working on.

I have been working on a pastel of a flamingo since I finished the Rhino, which was shortly after I got back from a trip to Florida. It’s a large piece and I did struggle a little with how exactly I wanted to handle some of the background, so I haven’t always stayed focused on it. It’s coming along. I have completed an entire first layer so I could do the first coat of spray fix and now I’m onto the next layer of pastel. I’ve got part of the flamingo done and parts of the background. I was showing a photo of it, as it looked just after the first spray, to a friend and they thought it was done. I explained to them that it isn’t because it needs at least another layer, the color isn’t saturated enough. A few days later, after I’d added some of the next layer I showed them another picture of it at that point so they could see the difference that additional layer and saturation makes. The flamingo is still not done.

I did that experimenting that I was telling you about. I started with a snowman because, well, I like to draw snowmen. They are fun, and simple and make for a quick way to test out a new medium or paper or whatever. So I did one with the acrylics. I’m not really pleased with it, though I like the way some of the background turned out. What I did in my acrylic experimenting and practice that I really like is a butterfly. The background is abstract greens with the butterfly as the focus and by chance, it came out really nice. I particularly like the vibrancy of it. 

I did attempt another piece in acrylic that didn’t work out as I have hoped or expected. It’s salvageable if I decide I want to finish it. I’m not sure yet. Not all experiments turn out to be worth sharing, and not all get finished.

The reason for wanting to use the acrylic has to do with wanting bold and vibrant color and along with the ability to really blend and shade things well, oh and detail. But, I wasn’t getting comfortable with the acrylic paints as quickly as I would like and it was keeping me from creating the work that I really wanted to do. So. I finally decided to do it a different way. Though it did require I get past not wanting to do something that was going to eat up my pastels, as in, use them up.

When I create a piece of art using pastel, I usually use pastel paper. It has some tooth but not too much, and requires a fair amount of spray fixative to be able to get really rich color and to not have the paper peaking through. A few months ago, I watched a video by a pastel artist who was comparing the different pastel paper options and giving a review. It was really cool and as a result I decided to order some of the textured papers for pastel to try. I really liked the way they hold onto the pastels and how rich the color looks on them, but, they felt like they really ate into my pastels as I was using them, and somehow this felt wrong or irresponsible. Like I was wasting resources.

I really wanted to do another taekwondo piece in color. I wanted it to be bold and vibrant and hopefully exciting, so I decided to try the textured pastel card again and just deal with the fact that it was going to wear down they pastel faster than I was used to. I am super happy with how it turned out. When I was working on it and making progress, I’d walk past it during the day, when I couldn’t work on it, and I’d stop and look at it and admire how they color popped. And yes, I’ll be using textured pastel card, and surfaces again. I’ll just buy more pastels.  

At this point I have three pieces of art at the photographer right now. They are all pastel paintings. They are; the Rhinoceros, a painting of five tulips, and the taekwondo painting. Hopefully I’ll have them back in the next week or so and can start posting them on my store.

So that’s where I’m at. And for my plans…? I have been working on a few other things artistically, as well as that flamingo, and I have another couple of piece already in mind to start. I also have more travel coming up for the day job which, I need to do a few things to prepare for. This trip will be a big adventure and I expect to have plenty to tell about it once I get back. And I’m going to try to get another blog post done before I go. 

Cheers!

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Time to Catch Up, Again

Posted on July 2, 2024 by SusanG

Yes, it’s been a while. I keep saying that I will get better at posting. And I always intend to and then something gets in the way. Usually, it’s me. So I won’t promise to get better, you’d rather see that than me keep saying it and not doing it. And since it has been a while I’ll try to bring you up to speed and maybe a little more. Grab a cup of coffee or tea and get comfortable.

First up. My day job decided to do another in person, all hands, department meeting this year. At one point they were going to do it in Nashville, which I thought would be really cool but they changed their minds and decided to do it in Orlando again. The best part about that was that I extended my stay and spent some time with my sister. The second best part was getting to see two rocket launches.

A very judgy duck at Disney Springs

A bit about the launches before I go on. I lived in the Orlando area during part of the Space Shuttle era. It was common place to drive out to the coast to watch a launch. It was also common to stop what we were doing during a day or evening and just watch it from an office window, a parking lot, or the driveway. Yes. You can see a launch from Orlando. Though they are much more spectacular from closer up, like from the space coast. 

So on this trip, after dinner the first night of the meeting, one group of people decided to go to over to the beach to watch the SpaceX Starlink launch. I didn’t go with them but a smaller group happen to be talking about it when I went down to the lounge area to hang out and they invited me to go. It had been so very long since I’d made that run out to the space coast. It was a lot of fun. We didn’t get the best viewing but we did end up just stopping on the side of the road to watch it, and listen to it, and feel it. That’s the really cool thing about watching a launch from the coast, you can hear it and feel the rumble as it comes across the water. It is really awesome. And the sight! Oh man. That is something else, especially at night. Those are the most exciting to see, the night launches. 

The second launch that we got to see was a bit of a crap shoot. We weren’t really sure whether it was going to go. It was the Boeing Starliner crewed mission. They had tried three or four times to get the thing off the pad and had to scrub it each time so we didn’t know for sure if we were going to get to see it. We were in a training class as part of the meeting when it was scheduled to go up. But we did get to see it. At just seconds before the launch we all marched to the other side of the building, we were on the 19th floor, and invaded a conference room and watched the launch. We mostly just saw the con trail through the clouds, which was just as exciting. 

We got wet. Very wet.

The time with my sister was a lot of fun. We got very wet at Disney Springs. No, it’s not a water park. It’s a shopping, dining, and entertainment area. We wanted street tacos and they have some really good ones there, and I wanted to pick up a couple of things from the Cirque du Soleil shop. It was a nice day when we got there. But then, as happens in Florida in the summer, the afternoon storm made a showing. We did get the tacos, but we were probably the last ones served because the storm. We made it to Cirque du Soleil after that. That was the first time we got wet. While we were in the shop things let up so we made our way back to the other end of the place to get a few other things. We were just ready to leave when the sky opened up and dumped buckets of water. We tried to wait it out but decided to make a run for it. And that’s when we got very very wet. Very wet. And yes, it was fun. You can’t really help but laugh in a situation like that. 

In addition to Disney Springs my sister and I also went to Seaworld. It had be years since I was last there. It was fun as always, though a bit hot. I might have whined about it a little. I like the heat but for some reason it was just kicking my butt. To the point that I thought the temperature in the Arctic exhibit was reasonable and comfortable. Still we had fun and she got some amazing Orca pictures from the show. We did spend a little time in her pool after that. And the next day. We made a point of choosing the hottest forecasted day to spend in her pool and my niece and her family joined us. That was a treat. My niece’s daughter has been very slow to warm up to me, not surprising I don’t see her but about once a year at the most. This time though, she is old enough to grasp the sibling concept a little, probably because she has a brother on the way, and she was able to relate that I am her Mommom’s sister. She wasn’t to keen to play with me in the pool but after swimming she got a little friendlier. It was a treat. 

Another treat was the trip to the art supply store. My preferred art supply store is Dick Blick, or Blick Arts. I can order online, but I do like to actually go to a store sometimes. Unfortunately the closest physical store to me is in Savannah, Georgia. But it turns out there is one in Tampa, Florida which is close enough to my sister that we decided to take a trip over to check it out. I did spend some money. I needed another suitcase. It was so cool. And since we weren’t too far from it, we made a visit to a park in Tarpon Springs. The park wasn’t what my sister was hoping for but it could be good during the school year when there might not be so many people. 

Once I got home from Florida, and got my world put back together, I finished up a couple of paintings that were close to being finished before the trip. I have a pastel painting of a group of tulips that I really only needed to sign and spray finish and now that’s done. Then there was the Rhino. That still needed some work, though not a lot so I got that done and then the final spray and sign. And that’s all the work that I was actively working on. 

Unfortunately, that means I’m now in that dreaded window of time when I have finished things but haven’t started anything else. This is my most frustrating time. I think I’ve said before that if I haven’t started a new piece by the time I finish one then it’s really hard for me to start the next piece. This time I’m running into trouble deciding what to work on. If I happen to decide I want to work on a particular thing then I start going back and forth in my head with what medium to use. It’s exasperating. And totally unproductive. 

It’s also probably a good thing. Because, when I’m going from one piece of art to another, I don’t do a lot of experimenting. Oh, I have, a little just not regularly. This gives me a little opportunity to experiment and play while I figure out what I want to create and how I want to do it.

Florida sky

The thing is, experimenting is important. It keeps things fresh. Experimenting can be trying a new medium, a new style, or even a new subject matter. By not trying them regularly, I can get stuck, or I get in my way and that slows things down. The way that can happen is if I have an idea that I think would look good a certain way but I don’t have a lot of practice or experience with doing it that way then I may not even try to tackle it because I don’t know how it’s going to work out because I’m not sure about how to do it, and several other reasons that go through my head and keep me from creating that idea. It can also get me stuck for creating a different idea because I can’t quite get past that one that I’m not sure how to make happen. It will sit there in the middle of the mental doorway and just barely budge if at all.

Fortunately my mental doorway is not currently blocked. I’m just dealing with the inertia that comes with completing a piece and not having something else ready right away. However. I do have some sketches that I’m working on and I’ve chosen a new piece to start. I hope to get that started in the next day or two. And I as I said, I am doing a little bit of experimenting which I’ll tell you about in another post because by now you’ve finished your cup of tea or coffee and probably need a bathroom break. 

Cheers!

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Oh! The Possibilities!

Posted on May 4, 2024 by SusanG

While I have that sentiment about many things, for this discussion, I’m talking about art. Specifically, I’m talking about all the possibilities for paintings. Which, a few months ago felt a little more constrained, or required a bit more calculation or engineering. You’re thinking, ‘what’? I know. Just hear me out.

Up until a month or two ago, I was planning on most of my art pieces being either some form of stippling or watercolor. I considered taking up painting in some other medium than watercolor but hadn’t quite committed to figuring out oils, or learning about gouache, or trying acrylics. All of those would require a fair bit of learning and maybe even dealing with the valley of suck. A place I didn’t feel I could spend too much time fighting my way out of. Last fall I happened to start a piece in pastel as an experiment. That piece turned out to be my painting A Cliff and the Southern Ocean. 

The experiment was to use soft pastel as a watercolor. The pastels I use are mostly pigment with little to no filler and so they dissolve nicely with water. I worked on the piece off and on for several months and tried to enjoy the messiness of working in pastel while definitely enjoying the vibrancy of the color. At the time I still had several other pieces I was working on or had planned so I didn’t think of it as anything other than an experiment. 

Then one day I read something about pastel and canvas. I don’t remember what or where it was, but it stuck in my brain. I had been using canvas board for the stippling paintings with the acrylic ink and since I was planning more of those, I had a few extra, unassigned canvas boards laying around. I also have some sanded gesso. I bought it a few years ago after working on a pastel painting for myself, but I hadn’t really used it. Since I didn’t think just a gessoed canvas board was going to be enough for the pastel to adhere to I decided to give the board a coat of the sanded gesso. 

Yes, this started as a squirrel. An idea that takes hold and distracts you from what you were doing. I’d ask for help cleaning the squirrels out of my place but honestly, I’ve become accustomed to them and would miss them terribly, so I just deal with them.

For that canvas board experiment, I chose a picture of some berries. I wanted something that would be interesting but not too intricate in its detail because I was trying something else new as well. I didn’t sketch it out in minute detail before I started on it, as I usually do. I tried blocking in the main parts with the idea of filling things out with the color as I ‘painted’ with the pastel. I started it and then got very involved in finishing some other pieces. By the time I got back to it I was rethinking the stippling and had done, what at the time, I thought was just going to be a sketch in pastel. I also happened to have a long weekend off from the day job. I chose to spend the weekend finishing several pieces of art that I had sitting around. The berries where just one of the pieces. At the time I was also in a bit of a quandary as I was starting to find that the stippling was really taking a toll on my eyes and my hand. 

As I worked on the berries with the rich color and the ease of covering a larger area and the mixing and even detail possibilities, I got really excited about the piece. This piece that started as an experiment. I used the picture because I thought it would be a good comparison later when I did it in watercolor. But here I was seeing it come together in pastel and just amazed and loving it. There are pieces that when I finish them and step back and look at them, I am amazed and sometimes dazed. It’s a feeling of pride, and humility because I’m a little stunned that I did that. The berries were that. And more.

I had not considered pastel as a main medium they were just a faster way than colored pencil and easier than watercolor for doing a larger piece of art in color and usually just for myself. And even at that, I keep buying more pastels. I even brought some back from Paris last year. Then, I finished the berries. I saw pastel as a possibility. I turned around and did the Silvertone Guitar in pastel, also on canvas board, instead of the acrylic ink stippling I had originally planned for it. I decided to do Fred the fish in pastel even while still working on a stippling version of it because I could see how vibrant I could get the color. 

Before, when I looked at a picture that I wanted to paint from I had to consider how I wanted to do it, watercolor or stippling. If it was stippling, I had to decide color or black and white, and how was I going to show the detail or make the subject stand out from the background if I wanted a background. Now when I look at a picture that I want to work from there is less thought of how I’m going to do it and if it’s possible to do it. I still have to decide between watercolor or pastel and size as well as surface, those decisions never go away. But now I just think of how cool it would look and is that what I want to work on right now. I’ve even gone back to some photos that I really like but had put aside because I couldn’t quite figure out how to do them. Now, I look at them and see them as possible. 

Sometimes it just takes finding the right tool, or medium, to open up a world of possibilities and the joy and excitement that brings. Do your remember being or watching kids in a toy store? How when they encounter all the different toys that are doors to different worlds of the imagination, you can see their eyes and brains glow. That’s what I find for myself now, with the current shift towards pastels. 

To be sure there are still things I’m working on and learning. Like choosing the right fixative. I had another artist on Instagram suggest a particular brand that doesn’t distort the pastels, so I am going to try that. The search for that fixative lead me to some others that I want to try as well. I’m also still working on what support I like best for pastels. I have a stack of the Canson Mi-Teintes pastel paper so I’m using that for now as well as taking a better look at the sanded gesso on canvas board. And then there are the pastels themselves. Just as in other mediums you have variances that make one brand a favorite over another, the same in soft pastels where there is a variety of hardness and as well as pigments, color selection, shapes, quality, and if you want pastel pencils or just the sticks.

And even with that…Oh! The possibilities!Yes, in six months or a year, I could switch to some other medium that I find just as liberating. Hooray! It isn’t about finding that one thing. For me it’s about finding the thing that lets me make the art that needs to be created. 

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