2024 new year’s resolution
Hello, well, it’s February and I’m just now posting my 2024 new years resolution!
In reality I had it in my head all along but I’m just now sharing it. After having it in my head about a month I can honestly say I am DOING my resolution! I used to have roughly the same resolutions every year with little impact on my life. However, I’m 37 going on 38 and I’m really beginning to feel time pass and I’m wanting to really ramp up on what I want to do. So… here goes for my 2024 new year’s resolution:
FIND AUTHENTICITY
It’s pretty simple really. It applies to myself and especially my art. I was about to have all these “SMART” art goals. What does SMART stand for…. um it’s some business-esq term for making goals. They must be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (yes, I had to look that up!). That seems so cold to me and…. very un-Lauren. I was about to declare I will create 30 painted pieces worth selling by 2025! But I don’t think I even really know what I want to paint yet so I still need some space for experimentation and a year of time to just explore and find my artistic voice.
Lauren (me) is very intuitive. I just KNOW when something is working and when it’s not working (I am an INFJ personality type after all!). And I was beginning to feel that my art was a bit of a chore. That it was turning from art into some extra commitment when thinking about opening it up for sale without having taken the time to really experiment. And I TOTALLY have a long-term goal of being a self-sustaining artist one day but I don’t want to force it. But in order to do that, I need to find my authentic art style. Yes, I probably could have been a self-sustaining artist since I graduated high school. I was making money creating art in high school as a caricature artist and as a freelance artist. I made T-shirts, billboards, board games, poker cards, etc. But I want to feel like I’m pushing myself and being true to myself of creating the best artwork I can. Caricatures and other quick art really doesn’t fit MY style. I’m realizing that I like to lean into my pictures and work out all the details. I enjoy thinking about… what is the perspective? Where is the light source? What is the color gamut? Is the anatomy relatively right? Is the composition strong? Does this fit in with my theme? I will always love a caricature artist for their speed and efficiency but you miss out on all those other elements when working so quick. It is nice though to have those skills in your back pocket when you want to make something quick for almost a release if you’ve been working on pieces that are taking a lot of time/effort.
My gouache/ink art cart!
These are all my supplies for making the comic-book style pages I’ve been making lately. Mr. Plant moves when I’m working and whatever supplies I need get put on the top shelf. It has rolly wheels at the bottom so it’s easy to move around :)
Find my tools
As a subpoint for finding my authenticity is finding the tools I like. This became very obvious to me when I was asked to do caricatures recently at a pub. None of the supplies I used to use still existed, so I had to find totally new tools. It sparked a little question in myself… what tools do I even like to use? If I WERE to draw caricatures, do I even like to use marker and pencil? What about outlining in marker and coloring in marker?
And I was also painting in gouache and acrylic. I’m still a little unhappy about painting with acrylic because it IS acrylic which is essentially plastic… and I try to eliminate as much plastic as I can in my life and just buy things that will last (nearly) forever. Perhaps I’d like oils? What about the fumes? Do I need a whole new setup? Can I still do plein air paintings with oil as I had been doing with acrylic? Won’t that speed up the time per painting? As a former caricature artist I still sometimes struggle with how long each picture takes. I do find that all the prep work to do a good picture really improves the picture but on top of all the prep should I really chose a medium that takes the longest to work with? If I were to switch to oils ALSO having paint that takes longer to dry could really inhibit my interest in painting I suspect. So ultimately I went back to gouache when painting from home… gouache and ink rather. And perhaps keeping acrylic for plein air painting which is handy when it rains as your picture won’t melt away as it sets up so quick.
Even as I’m sitting here… sitting by my side are some of those old-school fountain pen type nibs you can use for inking that I haven’t tried out yet. I have sweet brushes to ink with but sometimes you need something that isn’t so bendy resulting in variable line widths. So while I do have the awesome Faber Castel Pitt series type pens… I’m really trying to reduce waste and consider old-school methods where you just have your pen and you dip it in some ink. I REALLY REALLY want that to work. Perhaps I can just keep the pens for if/when I do ever draw on location (maybe a pub sing?). You don’t want a giant well of ink sitting out waiting to be knocked over and creating a huge mess!
Find my process
Another subpoint to finding my authenticity is finding my process. For example, what order of steps do I like to do? I’ve been reading SO MANY ART BOOKS as I don’t have an art education. But I’m realizing how many prep steps it takes to do an excellent picture. With my most recent picture, this was my current 10-step process:
Get a good reference photo to skip the steps of figuring out a good composition and determining lighting when rendering
Draw (on paper!) the big forms of the picture with pencil (I’m trying to only use digital for planning pictures as you’ll see in a moment)
Perfect the big forms of the picture with darker pencil. Add in the horizon line and start working proper perspective
Finalize the outlines and add in detail with mechanical pencil (yes, taking a nod from comic book artists!)
Ink over pencil outlines with black India ink (paint brush for the organic forms and a pen for the architectural elements) and then erase as much of the pencil as possible without going crazy (I hate using erasers! Maybe I can consider not erasing as I’m usually painting on top and if some pencil pokes through perhaps it will even look cool)
Digitally experiment with value and color. So, take a picture of the inked artwork with my iPad. Put it in Clip Studio Paint to determine where additional large swaths of black should go and the values and colors in the picture go before committing on actual paper. Make sure the “key” of the picture isn’t too light or dark and that the additional inking contributes to the forms and that the colors added have balance, harmony, and ultimately “read” to have proper values despite introducing color. Be loose and don’t be so literal when trying to match the reference picture. Have a bit of artistic freedom as this isn’t the final picture
Ink in the additional black on the physical picture using my digital drawing as reference
Begin coloring in gouache! Luckily this is GOUACHE so you don’t have to worry about getting your painting too dark too quick as it is an opaque water medium and you can always paint lighter on top or scrub out some dark paint to bring the underlying paper color back (I love that effect). This is why I love gouache… no fear of commitment or error while looking moody and grainy!
Ink again on top… but be more selective about inking. Ink the outlines again and outline different extreme value changes. I love this effect… outline weird nuances that happened with the gouache. This does take forever and is really subtle but looks so organic and UNDIGITAL which I like
If you mess up with the final inking pass… just add gouache over and ink again (I totally had to do this on my recent picture and you would never know that happened!) :)
In conclusion
So……… this post is super long! But you can see… I’m trying different things out and doing my resolution! I’m trying different media, different steps. I’m trying different paper sizes and anticipate that I’ll be dabbling with book illustration AND paintings intended to go on your walls. Maybe I’ll do little illustrations for sticker ideas. I’m not really sure if I want to do fine painting as in going the gallery route or just doing cute “decor” or “consumer” type stuff that you’d buy on Etsy such as stickers, mugs, books, etc. I’ve got lots of books explaining both routes.
I was tempted to submit some of my artwork to a gallery with an open call but they had a stipulation where you would have to sell your artwork if you got any offers and right now I want to hoard all my pieces in order to have a big starting collection. I think having a big collection ready to go will be pivotal in some way. And I’m starting to frame things and that is OMG… so expensive. $$$ but worth it as I need to hang pictures in my house.
Anyways… that is the latest. I’m just dabbling around and figuring out what feels good. :)
