Hello again. It has been a minute since my last post. After taking a few months off from painting I’m finally getting back to it. I didn’t mean to take such a large break, but the stress of everything going on was really taking its toll on me. Letting myself take a break was a huge relief. I think now I’m once again in a better mind set to paint and blog.
While I haven’t been painting much, I have been watching a lot of art youTube. Arleebean in particular has been very inspiring to me. She paints a lot of portraits in gouache and watercolor and uses a lot of color palettes that I wouldn’t have thought to use. Myriam Tillson is another youTuber that I’ve really been enjoying. She’s a French artist working mainly in gouache, watercolor, and ink. Her subject matter skews toward the dark and fantastical, but it blows me away how she develops ideas and concepts. Her sketchbooks alone are works of art. I definitely recommend checking their channels out.
Anyway, this leads me to trying to paint some of my own portraits. These paintings aren’t my first portraits, but it has been so long since my last one that they might as well be. Plus, all of my previous portraits were in black and white so I’ve never figured out skin tones. It’s no wonder then that skin tones have been the most difficult hurdle so far. I seem to bounce between my subject looking sunburned, jaundiced, waxy, and zombified. Finding the perfect middle ground in color is like walking a tight rope.
In exciting good news, my shed to art studio conversion is finished. If you weren’t aware, I started converting my shed into a livable space this last winter and have been slowly working on it for months. I’m proud of myself for doing most of the work myself but I’m grateful for my husbands help; especially when hanging drywall. There is still a lot to be done as far as decorating goes, but it is truly a beautiful space I’m proud of. I’m thinking of doing a full studio tour once I get it decorated. Let me know in the comments if you’re interested in seeing it.
This spring I also got chickens again. I loved having chickens before and am enjoying them again. In the face of this global pandemic, now seemed like a good time to have chickens. Since I have considerably less space to work with this time I chose Silkies. They’re small, relatively quiet, friendly, and can’t fly. Seems like a good combination of trails for a small backyard flock. Right now they’re still young, but I hope for my first eggs this fall.