Regression

When I paint and draw the same thing over and over

Hello Friends,

We are in mid-December. I’m not looking forward to the Holidays. There is too much going on as usual, and then we travel. Travelling equals stress for me. I envy people who look forward to seeing new places and disrupting their routines. I am not one of them.

I haven’t been painting or drawing much. I have a new work contract and am learning a new CMS. After working with WordPress and Squarespace for years I have to learn something called Drupal which is a nightmare. But it’s good to have new work and be allowed to rest from constant ruminations about how to make money. It seems it will be a long-term contract.

It’s a relief.

However, I have fallen out of practice in drawing and painting. I tried to paint a still life and it felt like I was a beginner again. It turned out horrible. I also tried to draw some semi-realistic figures, and they didn’t come out at all. I have also tried to practice some animal paintings and deal lord... they look so amateurish.

I tell myself it’s fine since I’m not interested in those subjects. I just like to practice them when my imagination is sleeping but when I can’t do something, I fixate and get into a painful loop until I get the result I want only to shove it to one side and do something else.

I did however start to play with watercolour cutouts and collage. I brought some of them into photoshop and began assembling some images.

I felt a lot of freedom doing this. I’m usually worried that using Photoshop will diminish the originality of a piece but the tradeoff is this flexibility in composition and playfulness with colour.

The only problem is that keeping track of the bits and pieces I use is difficult. I have zero ability to store and organize files. My hard drive is a mess.

This is the latest one:

This is gouache and watercolour on horrible paper which became an asset because the little granules look like sand.

The Symbolist in Me

In the last issue, I mentioned the book Le Symbolisme.

When I “regress” into rendering things, this book brings me back to where I’m supposed to be. Of course, I still want to draw accurately and paint beautifully but I don’t want to follow art rules. If I want to illustrate my journal, I will settle on the iPad. If I want to paint still life, I will use one of the many techniques I learned from online classes but for my personal, imaginary drawings, I will follow the mystery.

I love watercolour so much and I tend to want to “master it” but at the same time, I don’t. I want to let it do its thing and push it further out of the classic way of painting without falling into “intuitive painting” which for some reason rubs me the wrong way.

Mixing gouache and watercolour is giving me such good results. I love Holbein gouache. I have only two gray tubes. This brand is beautiful whether you lay it opaquely or transparent.

My latest obsessions

• Why oh why did I discover miniatures?

• Norwegian artist Vanesa Baird is my spirit guide.

• This subreddit: contagious laughter

• Passionate But Penniless

• I finished reading The God on the Woods which was quite entertaining but these comparisons with Donna Tartt are exaggerations.

• I also finished reading Shy Creatures by Clare Chambers. Give me a story about a character withdrawn from the world anytime.

Thanks for reading!

Luisa