Pushing Paint - Push it Real Good

Today a friend of mine asked me how I go about blogging, whether it is on a schedule, my frequency and goals.  I didn't have a very clear answer to any of it.  I've always kind of done this thing at night, when I am through with my work day.  When I am excited about work I blog; I want to share, see what people think, open up the gates that create the boundary between someone completely engaged in a project and the outside world.  Learn.

When I got home from hanging out with my friend, I had dinner, cleaned up and started working on an illustration project that I had worked on all day.  It is a pretty good project.  For all intents and purposes I really like it.  I have been given pretty well free reign and that is amazing, but I got tired after dinner.  I managed to finish one sketch and during the middle of Billy Bragg and Wilco determined to take a nap.  It was a far longer nap than usual.  Usually I manage about a half hour.  This was more like an hour and a half.  When I woke up I felt very groggy and sick of illustration.  I putzed through one more page for this book and started to think about how it was too early to go to bed.  I picked up the commission that I had been working on and looked at it and thought, "I'll push a little paint until I can't do this anymore."

Four hours later I looked at the clock, realizing that I needed to start getting ready for bed.  I used up the rest of the paint on my palette on a scrap of wood in studio, looked at the painting I had been working on, and realized everything that I've been missing the entire time I was in graduate school, what the answer to Pilar's question was, and what I need to do to keep myself motivated.

When I started blogging in 2006, I was so excited about my work that I would get home late at night and my girlfriend at the time would be asleep already.  I would want to share my piece.  I was so excited that I couldn't think about sleeping yet.  I still felt jazzed about the painting.  Tonight I have that, and on a night that I thought I had no energy.  That's the answer though.  I started blogging at the end of nights that I had put my all into a painting.  The adrenaline always needs a moment to calm down, and writing a couple paragraphs helps me process what I did and settle a little into the relaxation that is my house, or in my present circumstances, my bedroom.

Here is what I was working on tonight.  I am so pleased with it.

It's a lot of old school, but I think there is a bit of the last two years in there too.  I can't quite explain it.  I was thinking about different things while working this out.  I was pondering what it meant to others.  I don't really know the answers to anything, but I'm thinking about it.  I think that that influences what it looks like anyway.  I'm excited.  I need to get to sleep.  Thank you for reading.

Peace
-Mike