Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Day 42,Painting a Day

Baby Steps, 8x8, pencil and paper.

Remembering my babies on today, Holland's birthday.
We remember Holland and Michael learning to walk in their Stride Rites. Every toddler should wear Stride Rites. They are sturdy, adorable, and make the best little pitter-patter.

This drawing looks nowhere near as good as I wish it did. But, I learned a lot, or rather, relearned a lot. This started out as a graphite drawing, using an HB, which is prudent for a beginning. But then I leapt all the way up to a 7B. It was way too soon, and the drawing never fully recovered from that error. I tried to create balance by back-tracking to a 2B and 4B. Finally, I sprayed the drawing with fixative and treated it as an under-drawing.

That was the right move...but colored pencils can only do so much. The tones had already been compromised. Thankfully colored pencils did indeed improve the drawing tremendously, regardless.

This project is not about reaching perfection each time I touch paper or a canvas. I am very pleased to have made mistakes and learned from them. That brings on growth...and that is the goal. My husband read somewhere that you have to dedicate 10,000 hours to a pursuit to achieve mastery. The dailiness of this project inches me along... I'm not keeping track of the hours, and I pray for success. I think it would be great to achieve mastery.

So, like these Stride Rites, I'm baby stepping until I can run.
Thanks for checking in.

2 comments:

yarska said...

They're really good! So cute! Excellent idea of fixing it and using colored pencils. I never would've thought of that. I love the slight touch of color in there, as well as the hint of purple where the front of the two shoezies meet.

It's really hard not to desire perfection on every drawing. I have such a hard time with that...

Cafeglover said...

I think it was Plato who said that Necessity is the Mother of invention. Making mistakes and correcting them is half the fun. I think it means we are learning through discovery and trial and error. Am still trying to figure out what to do next. Part of my goal is to find my voice as an artist. Find my voice, hone my technique....