Drawing Fruits

Yesterday I decided it would be wise to head into the studio since otherwise I was primed to be grumpy as heck.  In fact, Chris told me I should go draw since I wouldn't be any fun to hang out with otherwise.  My family knows me well!

I had an urge to draw fruit since I had spent an entire evening sorting through my pastel drawings of fruit last week.  I remembered how much fun I had had drawing them so I bought a bunch of pears and headed out to draw them some more.  Here are the results:

Pastels are so satisfying to draw with.  The colors are rich and exciting and bold; it's easier to draw with them than with a brush; the results come more quickly. 

In oils I've gone back to a piece I started months and months ago.  It's an 8' behemoth that has me stumped.  I think the problem is that there isn't enough contrast in the image and the shadows and light on the skin aren't as interesting as they are in other images I've done.  I'm having a heck of a time turning it into an image I love!  My colleague, David Tanner, from the Visual Arts Center came over a couple of months ago to give me some very generous and helpful pointers.  They were helpful, but I haven't gotten the breakthrough I'm looking for to make this one exciting.  I may need to make it a blow-out piece.  What that means is I decide, "Fuck it!  I'm going to throw paint and do whatever the heck I feel like cuz I already hate it how it is."   The odd thing is that when I do that, something magical happens - I get outside of my own restrictions and something occurs that is beyond me.  I work so hard to make things "just so".  Blowing it out changes all that because I basically give myself permission to ruin my work, to go for broke.

Tomorrow I'll have time to spend in the studio - we'll see if I have the courage - or frustration level! - to go for broke!

I just watched a video online that I found to be quite wonderful.  I can't remember the man's name, but he had gone to Princeton for software engineering then began doing all these incredibly creative things with his technical abilities.  For example, he went to Bhutan where their national slogan is "Gross National Happiness is more important than Gross National Product" and got people to hold up between 1-10 balloons to show their level of happiness.  Then he photographed them holding them, then holding one with their wish written on it, etc.  They were lovely.  He did another project where he got his software to grab sentences off of people's blogs that had the phrase "I feel" in it.  He graphed those in all sorts of interesting ways.  I recommend it highly.  It has made me start thinking in all sorts of creative ways I hadn't considered before.  I love it when I see things or hear people talk who are outside the box - it expands my awareness so much!