Keeping Good On My Resolutions..well Kinda of.

Last week, I mentioned in my blog post that one of the things I wanted to do better at or enhance my skills was in using my digital drawing program.   Good intentions, yes. In my head, I'd commit to a drawing a day but that went out the window after the first day.  I could give you a lot of excuses but the fact of the matter was  getting my class "Podtastic" up and running consumed me for the last two weeks day in and day out, so the thought of spending any more time at the computer seemed overwhelming to me.   My back ached, my neck is stiff and my eyes were strained. Even as much as I accomplished, I was still ticked at myself for not doing what I said I was going to do.

We are hardest on ourselves, aren't we?  Not that that is a bad thing, it just is why do we stress ourselves out about what we didn't do....instead of celebrate what we did accomplish. I completed a huge huge huge project! Yay!!  And I think it's really good...but the voice in my head says, you are such a slacker...you can't even follow through on your resolution during week one of the New Year.  Never mind the hours and hours you did work..I still felt guilty.

Really?  It makes me laugh now writing about something so insignificant, but that's the conversation I had with myself (and it's not really a new one, it's one that I play out over and over again just change up the scenario.

Sigh.    We are all a work in progress, aren't we??    So on to celebrating the two drawings I did manage to do this week in spite of my slackerly ways:)

Here is my first---I'm calling her Hanna.  I love to draw portraits, paint portraits, and I am loving the flexibility of testing out techniques with the digital sketching.     Definitely room for improvement but not too bad for the first one of the year.  I'm not going to promise I'll do one a day or weekly for that matter, but I would like to carry on and do more then do a look back at the end of 2015.  

I'm sure it'll be fun to see the improvements as time goes on.

My next drawing was something simple--I've been doing a lot of feather related things lately. I think I'll add them to my paintings down the road.   I used my feathers created for the holidays as inspiration.   One thing I did for this which to me is a 'duh' moment was to sketch loosely in 'pencil' for my first layer.  Add a second layer, and smooth out my lines and refine my sketch with a 'marker'.  Add a third layer and start to add color (paint, marker)...add a 4th and keep adding. more details and shading, you get the picture... okay so here is what I did differently, after I was happy with the 'refinement' and started painting, I deleted the first two layers of sketching.   ha. I'm sure this is done all the time in digital drawings, it just takes us common folks a little bit to catch on!!!

Still hate my handwriting but you gotta embrace what you have or improve what you got going. :)

Here is the feather a little more close up. Not perfect mind you but not bad either ;)

So what "Aha" moments did you have this week?  

Did you learn something new or have a coming to you know what talk with yourself about something stressing you out needlessly?

Curious minds wanna know!

*****

Here are the real (faux) feathers I did that inspired the drawings:

**If anyone is interested in feathers of your own, I will do special orders of 10 or more* Message me at jodiohl@hotmail.com    (sorry, until I carry them regularly, it's hard to do less then 10 at time because it is a pretty long process of creating them)


Have a great weekend!  Celebrate your triumphs this week and learn from your mis-steps!

Artfully yours,

Jodi