Working hard even while sick

Been sick with flu for past few days, and worst of all my 6 year old got it too, which makes it harder to recover especially because kids when sick require 60000000% of your attention, they don't sleep, and usually you wake up with your bed being wet, because they decided to pee while sleeping. In my country they say "Who sleeps with kids wakes up covered in piss." I guess that part is holding true. But at least I am glad she is on the mend, i will be eventually.  Oh good news I got delivered my Canon EOS 550D yesterday, and my old HOYA filters from Nikon F60 fit on lens. I was happy to play with it yesterday it was good distraction.  And dear god it has so many buttons, but will get me through the school year, because being awesome SLR it also takes high definition video.

Being an artist I am not sure what is worse, seeing your work sell or going to pick it up when it doesn't sell at the show. When you sell your work you hope it ends up in good home, with someone who will appreciate it, knowing most likely you wont see it ever again.  Its like trying to say forever goodbye to an important part of yourself. When work does not sell you are left with wonder of what you did wrong, however I take comfort that if you create for masses, for audience you will never be true to yourself and your art, you will be a 3rd grade sell-out. (again saying by my people) Today I have to go pick up my nautillus drawing from the CAS Contemporary by the nature show.  Last year was good year things no matter how wacky would sell, this year it is hard.

This year I am focusing on learning, and I am giving it my best go. For me biggest regret was when I was at uni I got accepted to art school and could not do it because my family was badly against it and I had to study maths and CS because I didnt want to be doctor like they wanted me to, so this is my chance to learn, and regain the ground, and knowledge, so maybe in few years time I will go to do my proper arts degree, and learn and develop even more.

To be honest on Tuesday I was jumping up and down when I had to work with the cabbage drawing.  I did find it frustrating and hard, especially because observational drawing is not my strong side, and my hands do not want to listen to what my head tells them to. I think I was last one finishing it.  I know cabbage is not dead, to me sadly whole world is dead, consequences of living through the war and seeing everything you cared about gone forever.  That is why my art is dark, and I return back to my own comfort zone of using same dark colours (burnt sienna, cadmium red, prussian blue and same shades black iron oxide, titanium white) It was extremely hard and challenging to pick up purple and work with it, green I am still scared of.  I do try to use it now and then but that is colour I never mastered,could never get depth out of, could never relate to it properly, even though at one stage my whole world was green.

I found that I actually like some aspects of pastels, especially using soft grey for blending instead of white. I found it makes amazing tones especially when mixed with burnt sienna. Purple I used in the end, and I am glad it got through my thick and stubborn head to do so and I had fun with it.  I am however not fan working with too many colours I like reducing them to basics. When there is too many of them I find it too easy to make it cheezy, one wrong stroke and there it is cheeze, and crowd pleaser on paper, and I hate that. I hate bright colours, I hate cheerfull ones, I like things being semi dead, rotting away same way society is, same way whole world is sinking and being devoured by its own corruption.

What excited me the most was getting photomanip done.  My photo with mobile phone camera was fuzzy, so I borrowed one of Pete, however surprise came when I overlap the photo with the painting and found it matched down beautifully.

I included some of the elements of photo into the pastel painting to enhance it, whilst trying to keep simplicty and elements of painting I like intact.  I was jumping up and down literally in my chair to find things overlap correctly.

To be honest my biggest challenge is to get colours as they are in front of me, it is part of observation and I do severely lack colour theory to help me with it.

For the sculpture class I think, I am not sure though if i am finished.  Here is the final image:

To be honest it is photomanip of about 30 different photos, including 6 of diorama I made from computer bits and printouts of photomanips on foil. .  The figure in center is stock art by Marcus Ranum.  There is a lot of airbrushing, erasing elements, blending elements. This was challenging, especially because I have OCD and find myself working down to magnified 1200% level, down to pixel fixing it.  I decided to stop before I actually drive myself mad. and up the wall. I found myself continually revisiting bits, going back and forth, and just when I would finish one part I would find error somewhere else and had to fix it, had to redo it.  Its hard.  I found that working in photoshop feeds my OCD even more than actually drawing with pencil.I will need to find a way of dealing with it, no matter how hard it is, any suggestions are appreciated. I enjoyed in the end blurring things by adding thing layers with textured brush of sepia, red and black, making it smokey and aged.