So many artist activities are filling my days I'm happy to say. Having wrapped up Louise Fletcher's "Momentum" course, I've joined her Art Tribe. This is a website that is part library of how to do all things art and it's also a community of artists who collaborate and support each other. As someone who never had the luxury of a lot of time for indulging in making art, I have so much I want to learn now that I'm retired. Different mediums, techniques, products, ways of displaying and sharing... I'm digging into everything.
As shared in this blog over the years, I started with watercolor painting and did that exclusively for years, mainly painting realistic paintings. In the past year I was introduced to acrylic painting and gained an appreciation for abstract art. Over the past month I've started exploring soft pastels. I dabbled with them here and there during my watercolor years and knew I enjoyed drawing with them. Now I'm pulling out some of the prettiest photos I've taken of gardens and making representations of them in pastel. The vibrant colors of soft pastels are so suited to this! Here is one of my first works: some orchid primroses I saw at Butchart Gardens in Vancouver British Columbia. Next steps for this will be to frame it and display it out in public as well as make prints available at annewoods.art.
I'm learning about the different grades of pastels and name brands other artists use and why they choose them. I've learned about sanded paper for the first time. This special paper has "tooth" which allows the artist to apply more layers of pastel. Underpainting the darks first is a technique I'd never done in the past with pastels and it's such a smart way to approach a painting. And painting with soft pastels and rubbing alcohol... that's a thing too! Who knew? Such fun!
My personal view, at least at this stage in my artist life, is that we do whatever we want... there are no rules for staying in one lane as far as I'm concerned! If we have curious and adventurous minds about various art forms and styles, explore it all. The key is to make art that makes us happy. If we are expressing what we are interested in, others will see it and feel it too.
A final note about new endeavors this month: I am working on a mind map to document themes that are important to me which would be good to express in my art. It's yet another Louise Fletcher exercise designed to help her students make meaningful art and never run out of inspiration for what to make next. The mind mapping requires time for quiet introspection about life experiences, feelings and viewpoints. Day by day I add more to it. Inspiration will come regarding how it will translate into the art I make going forward. Stay tuned. It's gonna be good!
