Getting Started Again

Now that I’ve been home from college for about a week, I’ve had some time to try and figure out what I can do artistically to keep myself busy.

I’ve always struggled with doing artwork on my own just for myself. I think art school really messes with your productivity to feel like there’s always a deadline incoming. At home, that pressure to always make goes away and at least for me, I like to be able to sit and not make art for classes, but simultaneously that’s a really bad habit to get into. How can one teach art if they don’t even stay an artist themself?

Being home I have a very different etiquette of a studio space I’m supposed to follow, since it’s you know, my home. I can’t paint the walls crazy colors, or be up super late in there. So, so far I literally haven’t sat in there to do anything, even though I should be in there instead of my bed for most work-things that I do. I need to un-train my brain to only be able to do work in bed, it’s not healthy.

I’m not really sure what to do with my time artistically now, I think I should finish my sketchbook, start a new one, and take photos with my various cameras I guess? I have half-finished star shaped pillows I was making that are in my studio, but I think no stuffing.

I did a couple more doodles yesterday, trying out the solid color idea like I said, in black. The one I did in my sketchbook looked okay, but when I did a new one digitally it looked weird, couldn’t quite place my finger on why. It may be the line weight differences I added. I also realized I forgot to add the background to the ones that got posted yesterday.

Black Doodle Digital, Attempt 1

I think looking at it now, the many thick and few thin lines are weird. If there was a better balance between thick+thin it would probably look better. The big shapes I think need to be toned down, maybe taking an edge-in approach as opposed to the big-shape-out approach I take now. Also there are WAY too many lines and not enough shapes towards the middle. I’ll retry this one before I make the black doodle mug.