self portrait

I got tired of studying before I even started today, so I did a digital painting of one of the photos I posted yesterday. This is the first time I’ve done a serious digital self portrait, and I’m fairly pleased with it. What annoys me is I can see what’s wrong with it, but I don’t have the technical ability to correct it… I guess that’s something to work on. Digital painting is really fun – I’m starting to realise that getting the hang of the palette is half the process. I keep redrawing and reshading as I go because the colours are wrong, but that’s all a part of how it happens, I guess.

So today ends with me being pleased with progress and eager to keep at it, but also very displeased with academic progress.

graphoto

Occasionally I grab the ‘good camera’ from it’s shelf and give photography a go. They’re usually just of me because I don’t have models besides my dog or my parents.

Pictures on my walls range from fashion shots taken from magazines I bought when I was a turbulent teen, to some more classic art like Monet and Millais. I’ve also got some asian art up, by Hokusai and Hiroshige, but I want more. One of my favourite pictures is a little square cut from a standard magazine with pictures of flowers and their names – I guess I like it because I can never recognise flowers by name and hopefully if it’s on my wall long enough I’ll soak up that knowledge by osmosis or implicit learning.

I’ve decided that this photo I’ve posted is called ‘Sheet Day’; not especially interesting, but I like the mood. An image for a shit/sheet day, that’s hopefully kinda sad but not over soppy about it.

I’m not sure what the next one means or says. That’s actually something I wonder about when I think about amazing artists – I can’t imagine the tripped out perception that would come from everything you create possessing a profound meaning. A few of my planned artworks do have that sort of depth, but others just come out spontaneously and don’t finish up with any more of a story than there was to begin with. I like this shot because it’s happy – it’s pretty simple – just like how I enjoyed the last one because it’s sad.

Although it’s probably not fair to call those emotions simple just because the word is simple. They are universal emotions, everyone can recognise and understand them, so that must make them very profound things indeed. I’d rather lie on the wooden floor that my family sanded and polished and be happy than have a great deal many things.

The last photo of this very small series was taken of my closet. I was going for one of those shots you see fashion bloggers post of their wardrobes – so I set the camera down on a 10sec timer, positioned myself in front of my wardrobe and got ready. Sometime between then and when the flash went off (maybe around 8 seconds in), I decided to sit down on the travel suitcase, just to be a tad more fashionably cool. So I did. But it wasn’t shut properly so it caved in and I fell over and into the closet.  I’m pretty dorky. Haha.

perennial

This blog is an ambitious blog. It’s supposed to be dedicated to a lifelong pursuit of success in art, whatever that may be. It’ll probably stay personal until I feel I’ve reached a certain stage of ‘good’.

So this is the first piece of art to be submitted onto the blog. I sketched the lighthouse under instructions from a buddy, completed during a social psych lab. The rest was done on photoshop. I’m reasonably happy with it, but wish I had more patience to finish off the detail on the grass. I need to work on adding detail – will probably have to start doing things on larger canvases. Onwards.