I give up on trying to keep up with what is going on. When I first sat down to right this post I was going to comment on things that had happened and before I had finished it, something else happened. I have lost track of how many times I have sat down to write this post. I am calling ‘uncle’ on this. I’m going to write this, hope it makes some sense and post it.
The last month in this country has been a whirlwind of stunning and amazing events. If you could get whiplash from it, we would all be suffering for sure. Like many, I am hopeful for the year and years to come.
I have an update on the Mantis Shrimp pastel painting. I finished it. Yes. It is done. I’m quite happy with it. As happy as I am with the subject, meaning the shrimp, I think I might be just a little more pleased with how the background turned out. It may have opened whole new doors for me in creating art. Particularly in pastel. Possibly even in digital when I get to it. I have a whole new, better, more fuller understanding and respect for layers.
Yes. Layers. I thought I understood layers before. Particularly as a way to keep parts of your art separated so that you don’t mess up the part that you already have the way you want. Or to have the sketch in the background so you can work over it, using it as a guide. I’ve even started to grasp the idea of layers for blending. Though, not completely. With the Shrimp painting, I inadvertently used layers for making my background, simply because I was spray fixing other areas so they wouldn’t get smudged while I was working on some of the detail. This is cool and has me excited.
I expect, with the digital painting courses that I have purchased, I will be getting a much better understanding of layers in digital art and how they can be set to additive, subtractive, multiply, overlay, and whatever else they have for options. I’ve watched enough demonstration videos on Instagram to understand that understanding what I can do with layers and their modes will make a big difference in my digital art as I create it.
As I usually do when I finish a piece of art, after I finished the Mantis Shrimp, I decided to clean my art desk. I realized, as I was doing that, that I had several boxes of soft pastels and pastel pencils and they were all taking up extra space on my desk which limited my workspace. So, I decided to order better storage for the art supplies, or at least the pastels. I ordered a spice rack spinner thing at the same time because the spices were another better storage needed situation.
The spice spinner arrived first and I set about putting it together, taking all the spices out of the cabinet, putting the spice spinner in place which required raising the shelf above it so it would work best and then putting all the spices on the spinner in the cabinet. Oh wow. What a difference. And even when I closed the door. It is amazing how a change to such a small space, even behind a closed door can make such an impact on how a room feels. And now I can more easily see that I don’t have the spice or herb I was looking for.
The next day the storage for the art supplies arrived and I set about getting that all sorted out. I had to think about how I want it to work and what would be easiest to use. If I don’t have everything in the right order, meaning something should be in the top drawer instead of middle, I at least have things grouped properly and just moving which drawer is where is easy enough. I also got rid of I’m not sure how many boxes and tins that hold the supplies. I have more space on my desk and things are easier to find. I sat here stunned for the first few days. It was a lovely sight. And, after I tidied up the art desk and put the supplies in their new storage, I cleaned both my other desks, the one for the day job and the one for my personal computer work. Talk about a shock to the system.
It wasn’t just the routine cleaning after finishing the painting that prompted the need for storage. I also ordered some additional pastel pencils and soft pastels. They arrived just before I did my cleaning and contributed to the realization that I needed a better way to store the pastels and pastel pencils. Pastels and pastel pencils weren’t the only thing I ordered. I also ordered a gesso primer for pastel. It’s a textured gesso. It’s supposed to work on a wide variety of surfaces and supports so that I can use many things to pastel paint on, not just pastel paper. I had that in mind when I decided what to do for my next art projects.
The worst part about finishing an art piece for me is if I don’t have an idea of what I want to work on next. And I didn’t. I was really struggling with what I wanted to create next. So, I sat down and started working on the Gretsch point painting again. I got a bit annoyed with it and went to set it aside. When I did this, I managed to smear some of the still wet ink. At this point, I was disgusted with the piece. I’m not one to completely destroy or trash a piece most of the time so I opted to just take it off the desk and move it to storage and not work on it. And that’s when I figured out what do for the next pieces.
The first piece is an experimental piece, meaning to experiment with materials or such, like the new gesso. The idea is to do a small piece that doesn’t need a large canvas to see how I like the gesso, if it does as they advertise, and what other techniques I might want to keep in mind for working with it. I’ve started it. I may stop and try again because of the choice of paper. I chose some watercolor paper since it’s a fairly heavy stock, and because I have some in roughly standard paper size so it’s not too big. This is a little frustrating because all the valleys in the paper that are meant to hold the watercolor paint. This makes getting the really smooth looking color coating more challenging than I was hoping. What I may do instead is to take a piece of the Bristol board and cut it to a smaller size and try the gesso on it and start over with that.
The second piece will be a little larger. I’m not sure yet if I will use the gesso or just use pastel paper and spray fixing frequently to complete it. It will depend on how I like the gesso. The piece will replace the Gretsch point painting. At least that’s the plan right now. I think I will like it better. And I think I will like doing it in pastel better.
The third piece will be much larger, possibly as large as the Blue Footed Booby picture I did end of 2019 and finished in the first part of 2020. This one will probably just use the pastel paper and the spray fixing methods. I expect there to be more detail and more need for depth that I feel like I get with the spray fixing of layers. This will be another underwater creature. In fact, it’s one I have intended to do for years, in black and white using the same point method I was using for the Gretsch. I have a few animals I have done that way and it was next on the list. I’ll share more on that when I start on it.
Things are starting to set a rhythm. I’ve got studies for the day job still. That will be a bit of an ongoing thing. I finished the one set of lessons I was doing for the Azure stuff. I’ve started a different set for Azure as well as some for Chef. I’m rapidly approaching the project that I was hoping to use Chef for a part of. It’s a minor part but a good exercise in using the tool that doesn’t risk breaking anything too bad.
I finished the Rhythm Guitar course and have decided to spend some time practicing what I learned there and really getting it into my fingers before I start another guitar course. While I’m doing that, I’ve replaced the guitar course with a Web Development Bootcamp course. I started it over the summer and then for various reasons got sidetracked and had not gotten back to it. So that’s what I’m working on now.
So far I am really enjoying the web development course. Most of what has been covered up to where I am at, I have already learned or encountered over the years with different websites I’ve built. Though, I will say I now have a better grasp of how to use and create tables in html. Not that you would really want to, at least not for layout, which is how they were used at one time. Next up will be some CSS. Which is also something I have had a little exposure to. So, I am not expecting too many revelations. Though, I don’t doubt I will still find something new to learn.
One of the things I am enjoying about the web development course is somewhat similar to what I am finding with the German I’m working on at Duolingo. Either because of how Duolingo has structured their learning or how I am approaching it or a combination of the two, my grasp and comfort with German and the idea of using it has started to creep up on me. So that when I was speaking with a colleague the other day instead of greeting him with ‘good morning’ I used ‘gute nachmittags’ which is ‘good afternoon’ and more appropriate for the time of day where he is. I feel like the web development course is doing something similar for coding. It starts with a simple to understand ‘language’ to create a very basic web page that anyone who has been on the internet can grasp what it is. And the course will progress to not just the markup language and then the stylization language, it will also get into things like PHP and Javascript that are closer to ‘regular coding’ than HTML and CSS. And I think that, that bit by bit slow progression helps to build comfort with using coding or scripting as a solution to different things on the computer, either for personal use or for the day job. So, I’m really excited about working on the web development course.
The reading over the Holidays idea worked out really well. I read or finished reading a reasonably good number of books. Of course, I have probably purchased as many or maybe twice as many books as I finished. I tried to limit my book purchases so I could get a little more caught up on the unread books I have. I had set a goal of only purchasing one book for every two books I read. That only worked for a little while. Maybe what I will try next is choosing the books I am going to purchase each month, and then…. Never mind. That’s not even remotely realistic. I’ll just have to work on keeping up with my reading just like the rest of my studies. That covers what I think is noteworthy for now. What I manage to work on each week, as you know, varies. And with some of the things I’m working on there doesn’t really feel like a lot to tell. I’ll do my best to keep up and keep you up with the news and cools and adventures.