Ah... nothing like airing out the old summer blog after a long winter of busted computer. Now I have everything up and going and I trying to remember how the wacom tablet works. Only took me a couple weeks to figure it out.
Being offline so long made me rather nostalgic for the pre computer way of doing art. I spent all of my youth learning that stuff, only to have it become 75% obsolete. Even my trad stuff needs computer knowledge to send it and sell it. I was beginning to fantasize about an island where everything is done like it was when I was 15. It really made me miss doing it - so I decided to make a Christmas card with watercolor and colored pencil for my whole family - (about 20 people)!
Well, by Christmas I got about six done. I've done one since then. They're hard! Each one is an original design. Waah! And such. But I promise to get them all out before next Christmas! PROMISE!
I futz and putz too much is my problem. I need to employ a little more "gitter done" and less visualizing and refining in my head. I am the queen of researching. Everything is research! I make mental notes on a hundred things a day as an idea for this or that, how something acts, the color of this or that, a lot of it I forget or seem to forget until it pops up in something I'm drawing.
The thing of it is, you never know if your going to need a reference or not. You don't want to be tied to the reference. Experimentation brings a lot to the table, often better than anything you could have possibly researched. But you need the reference. You dip your mind in it every so often like you dip a brush for more paint or ink. Then through experimentation you refine it and define it. You select the parts you need, they are like words and your drawing is the message you're speaking. It's like writing a song and playing it at the same time.
Yep. It's time to go to bed.