You will notice that it is the 20th of June. I haven't posted here since last month. Perhaps this makes you think that I have gotten nothing done during this month, but that is not really the case. I have been slowly working on the four paneled mural and the condominium commission. I have been intermittently been working in my sketchbook. I have been thinking. A lot.
Yesterday I left for work, my day job, not my studio life, and I thought to myself as I looked at a piece, "that is not that different than what I am trying to do right now. In fact that is the same damn thing." It was big. It all started this week when I made a piece a young lady whose company I really enjoy. Do stop. I am not positive of anything but enjoying her company just yet, but the piece was extremely important in turning me around creatively. It was fun and I had been attempting to very seriously finish my big projects. I was taking my art seriously. It is good to take your art seriously, but sometimes it isn't at all. Sometimes you should really sit back and allow yourself to just enjoy the process. Sometimes I forget this when I am trying to finish something. Fortunately I wanted to make a fun piece this week and that fixed just about everything. Here's the piece. My friend enjoys lions. I can get behind that.
When I finished this piece, I immediately wanted to work on other things, but my gigantic mural project is in the way. I have wanted so badly to want to work on something and the mural project has been in the way, but the interesting thing is that as soon as I started approaching the mural project as something that I just wanted to finish, I started to really get into it. I started to try to make areas that were "done" much much better. It is working now. I had to make some quick adjustments to it today. It felt good, like I was really painting. Here is a quick, cruddy image of it.
I will post a better image tomorrow after I've worked on the piece a bit. I hope you like it. I really can't tell how good or bad it is anymore. I've been too close to it for 11 months. It seems like it should be less work than 11 months. Maybe it was just in learning the method. I don't really know. Someday I will.
Peace
-Mike
