a little...

overwhelmed.

I've been hopping around on the internet looking at watercolor paintings and videos on watercolor paintings and it's been helpful, but also overwhelming at house awesome other people's paintings are.  I have all these questions, like:
Do I need my own style?
Will I ever have my own style?
Can I get away with just painting animals and landscapes and actually making money off of it?
Or do I need to paint something more interesting and creative?

My answer to these thoughts is: just practice.  Just get your current goals met and then move on to your next step goals.  These things don't happen over night.

In the mean time, I've gotta stop letting this take over my thoughts and just make sure I schedule time into my day to work on this.  Because I have a lot of things to do that aren't sitting around pondering and looking at other artists' work.

started painting Shamrock!

I had some free time to myself scheduled in this evening and I decided to use it to work on my painting.  I was obsessing about the sketch up, erasing and sketching and erasing some more and then I just decided enough was enough and started to paint.  I didn't get too far in before my time was up, but I did get a pretty good start going.  There is, of course, a lot I don't like, but it looks like a cat!:

a bit darker than the read thing, but there it is!

finding the right photo

Last week I chose a photo to start sketching from some photos of dogs and cats I've received from friends and family.  I chose a little white haired Westie mix and started sketching.  The beginning was going ok, but as I went on, it became excruciating.  I had to MAKE myself sit there and do it!   I kept going for a little while and then put it down.  Only to return to it the next day and after a bit of time I determined it wasn't worth trying right now because I'm afraid to try a white animal.

I switched to an orange cat owned by a friend of mine and it was just horrendously hard right from the get go.  So today, I scrapped that one, too.  My friend also has an orange and white cat, Shamrock, and I began sketching out a picture of him today.  Well, I've decided to stick to this one all the way to the end.  No matter how terribly hard it is to stay seated and continue sketching.

Shamrock is that big guy in the back

I think the biggest problem with the two I scrapped was that I don't like the photos.  The animals are cute, but the photos have their problems.  I know, being in this business that I'm going to have to get used to making poor photos look awesome, but now is not really the time for that.  Now is time to just get a few more paintings under my belt, if nothing else than as evidence to myself that I can do this!

I know from the Legacy painting that frustration will happen.  Well, it's not frustration, I'm not even sure what to call it.  It's like such extreme concentration that I can only take it for so long.  And 'so long' is usually only about 5-15 minutes!  And then I just have to get up and walk away.

I was thinking that I haven't really sat down and tried to really paint in such a very long time because I never had the long-suffering patience to endure anything but instant gratification.  I wonder if other painters just sit and sketch and paint for hours or if they, too, paint in short little bursts and then get up and go about the rest of their day because that short burst was just too much?

And since we're talking about it, I'll share my time goal with you: I'm trying to sketch/paint for 15 minutes solid with no interruptions twice a day.  That usually works out to those times being back to back, because I really only get time when the kids are sleeping.

I've never drawn a cat before and I'm having serious issues with the ears.
But here we go! 

So, check back for some more in the next few days.  I'm hoping to be done with the sketch and moving on to painting by the end of this week!

Legacy

Here's the original - the real thing is a little more yellow

Close Up.

Here she is in grey scale, just for fun.

2011 Painting Goals

This morning I decided that it would be a really good plan to have some goals.  So, here we go:

1.  Five practice pet portraits completed by May 15th.

2.  Further develop ideas for local landscapes/cityscapes project: my southern california - including:
           -a better name
           -pictures of the area to paint

3.  Paint a local landscape/cityscape by May 15th

4.  Marketing, have the budget necessary for this figured out by June 15th:
           -Price out some custom business cards
           -create a portfolio and fliers for a booth set up
           -what about an easy up and table/chairs?
           -contact horse and dog clubs about setting up at their shows

5.  Brainstorm ways to get the money for this.

I think this is good.  I'll call this my 3 month goals.

The reason I need goals is that I'm learning practicing these is work.  I drew horses ALL the time as a kid, so my first pet portrait, a horse, was really pretty easy and quite enjoyable.  My next projects, a dog and two cats, is proving hard.  The sketch up is coming along slower than I'd like.  But I have to keep telling myself two things:

-Everyone has to start somewhere.
and
-Practice makes better (not perfect, I'll never have perfect paintings, I'm not going to kid myself)

Ok, that's all for now!