Studio Diary # 1

What I know and what I don't

September 6, 2023

Today I took two zoom classes. One was a workout class for cancer patients. I’m so stiff and out of shape. It’s funny to do this via zoom. We each do our adapted individual routines but we do the warm-ups and cool-downs together. It felt glorious.

Then I took a workshop with Peony Gent through the Daisie Platform which I do not recommend it has mediocre, badly recorded zoom “classes” and “workshops” but I love Peony’s work and I wanted a good hour of loose observational drawing. My aim is always to become less rigid, less constrained by technique and thus, less precious.

I was surprised to learn that Peony’s illustrations are drawings made on a first attempt. Although she draws and draws the same thing many times, she doesn’t take her drawings to the studio to rework them. She will choose one done on location for her illustration work.

60 second drawings

What I know

So far I know I prefer to work fast, loose, energetic, expressive, inexact, and imperfect.

I also know that I prefer subdued colours, where the contrast comes from a pop of colour and a sense of space. I love negative space in an artwork but I also love when there’s a lot to see.

So if I know this, I should’ve chosen my prefered mediums by now.

I’ve been working with oil and wax pastels, and charcoal but every few days I tend to go back to gouache and watercolor because I love mixing, layering and letting things flow.

Study of Les baigneuses de Cézanne in oil pastel

I tell myself that it is OK to go from one to the other, that my gut, my instinct and my whims are the boss not the head. And yet…

The head wants to “mansplain”. I keep trying to nail a more cerebral process. To choose consciously what I want to do. Run through three different ways to approach an artwork.

The design way

• Moodboard

• Color palette

• Principles of design

• Coming up with a concept

• Working in some sort of wall-art format

The Illustrator way

• Using a wordcloud

• Thumbnailing

• Colour palette

• Style, style, style

• final

The professional artist

• From the artist statment develop a complex, meandering exploration of a concept

• Master a technique or medium

• Make tons of sketches

• Transfer to support

• underpainting, or underdrawing

• make it complex!

All these three approaches take me to the same place: