Here are the sketches from this week. I drew a few more portraits but then I had enough so here we go:
Wednesday, I tried to make a portrait like this wonderful girl and my terrible version:
the next day, I did another girl. a little better this time:
Friday I did this girl I’ve admired for a long time and while I messed up the hair, i think the face turned out alright.
on Saturday I got sick of the portraits and did something different with this girl.
on Sunday, I tried a girl again and i can’t find the source anymore because it appears I forgot to pin it 🙁 I will find it but trust me when I tell you my version sucks:
Monday, I decided I’d had enough of faces so I tackled a violin:
and Tuesday I drew these cute houses.
and here we are. as always some are ok others not so great. let’s see what next week brings.
Karen,
I have been following your blog for about a year now. As an outsider, I have to say that I really love your illustrations and I for one have definitely seen a growth in your abilities. I have a friend who is a professional artist (she is quite the gifted painter). She attended the Art Institute of Chicago and was a professor there. She now is the head of the art department at one of our junior colleges. She happens to teach mostly adults (as opposed to 18 year olds). One of her insights that really struck a cord with me was the fact that learning a new artistic skill is very hard for adults because we have UNREALISITC expectations. This means we come to our first class with preconcieved visions of what our work should look like. And to make matters worse, in her opinion, as our skills progress, so do our EXPECTATIONS so that we never truly feel satisfied with our work. That is why she thinks most adults do what you seem to be sharing in your blog: they look at what there work is lacking, not what there work has accomplished. Youngsters do not seem to have this problem, lucky them.
I think your work is improving with time and you have actually given the inspiration to try my hand at it one more time.
Thanks Karen,
BEa
thank you for this. i can deeply understand and appreciate what you say and i know my expectations are unrealistic. i’m working on it and i am trying to be patient. also exploring to see what feels more natural. what feels more fun. what comes easily and what i love. so i can eventually hone in on one or two areas/types and work on those more deeply. let’s see if it works 🙂