I think I’ll always find something new to learn.
The more I continue down this creative life path, the more things I discover. I look for new ways to stretch and grow from each experience. I think I know something about a few things and a little bit more about a few more. There are things that I’ve forgotten and have been relearning, and there’s nothing that I know everything about. And there’s a great deal of which I know nothing!
Maybe I’m a work in progress, too.
Watercolor sketches with a touch of colored pencils added.
I like to sketch and paint. After a bit of a *layoff*, I’ve taken up the paintbrush again. Watercolors are fun and not at all easy. (Understatement, truly, especially if you’re a watercolorist.) I enjoy using acrylics and colored pencils, too. Mixed media, collages, photography, and… WAIT!! I’m getting distracted from the topic.
The *layoff* came about because I submitted a piece of artwork to be evaluated. I’d worked hard on that piece. I’d erased, rethought, listened to suggestions for revisions, revised, reworked, and wondered. It didn’t look like what I thought my original vision was by the time I completed. I sent it in anyway.
“Your style is not suited for our publication,” they replied. (Sigh)thought I.
I began to work on other creative things and lay my drawing supplies aside for some time. Of course, I still thought about what the reviewer had said, and as time passed, a new thought began to develop: What WAS my drawing/painting style?? The time away from my drawing gave me the opportunity to look at the artwork I’d submitted with new understanding. It really wouldn’t work for them the way it was presented at all. I can see that now.
I pick up my paintbrush with a new determination and the focus will be on FACES for now. They’re not realistic, they have character, they have nothing AT ALL to do with the suggestions made by the reviewer of my work. These are just for me. You may see something that you like, or maybe not. I may do a hundred of them before I’m satisfied. Some of them I like. Others, not so much.
When I complete a new illustration, I’ll send it to the reviewer, and should they not “like” it, to another publication, too.
Happy Creating!
Paula B. Puckett 