Fun With Paint!

So I stayed true to my word... I did get to work on some art today, in between some much needed house cleaning. Here's the result:

 ... And my palette...

I hope you can tell what the image is, it's a peacock feather I had laying around my house. When I work on a drawing or a painting, I like to work from an actual object... It just feels more authentic I guess. I was inspired to do some work this morning and I was searching around for something interesting to work from and I found this peacock feather that I got from work. I work in a theater and this crazy guy who was putting on a science show for kids gave it to me. He used the feathers during his show to demonstrate the properties of gravity. In case you are wondering- he did this by balancing the feather on the palm of his hand, which is surprisingly easy to do. Well that's beside the point.  I love the colors in the feather, which is probably why I chose it as a subject.

I am still on a break from the print so I decided to work with acrylic paint. I had these small pieces of Clayboard hanging around and I thought I'd try them out. Basically they are a piece of masonite board with some kind of coating on them. You are supposed to be able to use them for almost anything, including water media. I would like them more if things stuck to them. I originally started filling in the image with oil pastel, but that did not work out so I went over that with acrylic. The oil pastel just wiped right off of the board.

 I am not going to analyze this piece too much, I just wanted to do something for fun.

Stepping Away

I know, I know.... I haven't been making this blog a habit like I said I would. I've been busy with work and haven't found much time to work on my art, and when I've sat down in front of my linocut print, I haven't been motivated to keep working on it. Why? I'm not sure. Sometimes it just seems to be very hard to see a project through to completion which is especially true since I've been out of school. There are many different reasons why I become unmotivated or disinterested in an art project, I'll try to list a few.

Reasons for my many pieces of unfinished work:

1. Distractions: life, work, boyfriend, my cat, family drama... there's always something going on.
2. New ideas: you could file this one under distractions. Sometimes I'll be in the middle of working on something and I get a great idea for another project, which makes me want to work on that instead of the project I've already started. It soon becomes a vicious cycle.
3. Just tired of the artwork: Sometimes when you are too close to something, you don't appreciate it for what it is. This can be true for more than just your artwork.

Ok, enough with the excuses for now. I have tomorrow off, maybe I can quit making excuses and work on something then. I'll keep you posted.