Profile in Softer Shades

This week’s Let’s Face It lesson caused me to reflect on how I have been approaching both my online art courses.  In my determination to not purchase materials I am unlikely to use and in my pragmatic need to fit the lessons into my available free time, I have found that most lessons find me improvising, adapting the lessons to fit my circumstances.  It has led me at times to question the value of the lessons since I am not always truly trying a new approach, experimenting with an unfamiliar medium.  On the other hand, however, the lessons do inspire and encourage me to try new things and in doing so help me tweak my own style, help me find elements for my art that I either had not known about or did not know I would enjoy.  Furthermore, in moulding the lessons to suit me, I am better able to hold true to while developing my own style.  There is definitely something to be said for that.

This week’s lesson was taken by Robin Laws and should have involved manipulation of digital imagery and layering with and painting over collage.  Despite that being the focus of the learning, out of necessity and inclination I undertook neither step.  I did, however, draw my inspiration from the lesson: Laws’ exemplar was created using soft, pastel tones and – since I usually paint in bold colours – I decided to challenge myself to use paler shades and I set myself the additional challenge of including the ear, not doing my usual thing of covering it with hair.

I do think my proportions are getting better when drawing a face in profile and I am also growing more confident with making the faces I paint look more like the faces I draw, making them work with the more illustrative style I enjoy.  As I also find that I am much more interested in depicting faces than bodies, I have increasingly found myself reducing the torso portion of the bust to a much more simplified shape.  I think my husband’s Roman nerd influence is discernible as I have taken my inspiration from Classical herma.  Incidentally, the shades in this painting are actually paler than they appear in the photograph.  My husband thinks she looks a bit like Angelina Jolie.  I don’t quite see it but I will take the compliment anyway.

Girl with Golden Disc – Finding my own Style

I have been experimenting with mixed media for over a year now which has involved trying new things, different approaches to creativity and unfamiliar media.  This has necessitated me trying to find my own style when working with those media and tools.  I am also now a third of the way through the Life Book course.  Being exposed to different tutors with their diverse styles and differing approaches to creating art has also meant trying on new styles.  It is a case of seeing what fits and what doesn’t, which approaches mesh with my own style and artistic taste and which don’t work so well for me.

I have been finding that when I get the most frustrated with attempting something new it is either because it is pushing me way out of my comfort zone – which can yield positive results – or it is because that style or approach just doesn’t connect with me so effectively.  When I am at all disappointed in my response to a Life Book lesson, I have to take a step back and figure out why.  I have to ask myself which elements I like – perhaps a colour scheme or some mark making – and what aspects are leading me to feel “meh” about the piece.  I am coming to the realisation that working intuitively is not successful for me because I always get back inside my head.  I am just too much of a control freak to let go to the required degree.  What I am, therefore, attempting to do now is find the balance between being intentional and then being playful within the parameters of what I am aiming to do.  I am also accepting the fact that my natural style is that of an illustrator.  Whether I am at the whimsical or realistic end of the spectrum, I default to a more illustrative approach rather than a painterly one.  That is completely fine by me.  It is a style I enjoy and it is where my strengths are as an artist.  All the practice with acrylic, however, is definitely helping me hone my skills with that medium.  I still have a long way to go but I have come on in leaps and bounds since starting the Life Book course.

I have, therefore, decided that – as and when time allows – I am going to revisit some of the Life Book lessons and see how successful I am at adapting them to my own style and to my own approach, meaning that balance between intentional and intuitive.  The first one I decided to revisit was actually a recent one, a lesson by Tamara Laporte on intuitive portrait painting.  My control freakery had completely asserted itself during the painting process and my style was, therefore, far too tight and rigid as a result.  I reflected on the resulting painting and analysed what worked and what did not work.  I liked the composition with the head on the right side of the paper and I liked the circular “halo” around the head.  I also liked the 3/4 facing portrait and the use of drips and splatters.  What I did not like was the hair or the geometric shapes.

I, therefore, used the elements that I had found to be successful and ditched the rest.  I wanted a more muted, neutral colour scheme so I went for browns but mixed with metallics – bronze and gold – and I worked as intuitively as I could manage on the background of the left hand side by dripping and splattering, my concession to a lack of control.  I allowed the spatter to continue into the hair of the figure in order to unify the two sides of the piece.  I am much happier with this version.  It is much more “me”.

 

Small Differences: Mom Uniforms

I have noticed a definite trend among the mothers I see at school drop off and pick up time or the mothers who are pushing carts around the supermarket.  By and large they dress in an almost identical way and it seems that the donning of yoga pants to do things other than yoga is compulsory.  These moms do not appear to have poor personal hygiene so I am assuming they each have multiple pairs of identical yoga pants making up a considerable proportion of their wardrobe.  The yoga pants are usually black but some non-conformists wear grey.  I did see one very daring mother sporting purple yoga pants once.  But just the once.  The yoga pants are often worn combined with a long- or short-sleeved t-shirt or hooded top and I have noticed that often a key accessory to this mom uniform is an insulated flask, especially in the mornings.

I have no objection to yoga pants.  I’m a big believer in the principle that if you feel comfortable and confident in what you are wearing then you should wear it.  It is, however, not a uniform I will be wearing any time soon.  Or ever. Other people might feel comfortable and confident wearing yoga pants out in public but I just would not.  I actually own two pairs of yoga pants: one pair are old and I wear them when doing grubby household chores; one pair look good as new and are reserved for exercising in.  I am definitely comfortable in them but I would not wear them out in public because, quite frankly, I don’t look very good in them.  Have you ever seen a black pudding bursting out of its skin?  That’s what I look like in yoga pants.  Which has probably more than a little something to do with the fact that my exercising yoga pants look good as new.  I would not feel confident wearing them out among other people, hence I do not wear them other than in the privacy of my own home.  

While I shall not be filling my wardrobe with yoga pants, I do, however, feel that my own “mum uniform” needs tweaking a bit since I moved here.  I don’t think that is because I am no longer in Scotland and America demands a different style; I think it is more because my mum uniform developed over a decade living in a rural location whereas now I live in suburbia.  If you have been following my blog long enough to have caught a glimpse of me in the photos then you will have seen my uniform because I really do wear variations on the same thing every single day.  My staple item is jeans.  No, not those horrible high-waisted, pleated fronted “mom jeans” (I judder at the memory).  Just standard blue denim jeans, sometimes bootcut, sometimes wide legged, mostly just standard.  I then pair these with a long- or short-sleeved t-shirt or maybe – if I am going smart casual – a tunic top of some kind.  I even tend to go for the same colours over and over, either neutral colours or peacock jewel colours.  My footwear is seasonal but is a rotation of walking sandals, walking shoes and walking boots.

I was always a tomboy, have always been a bit of a scruff, don’t follow fashion, don’t wear make up or dye my hair and admit to being pretty lazy when it comes to my appearance.  Living in a rural area of Scotland, therefore, suited me down to the ground because my “style” (you can go ahead and snort at me referring to it in that way) was practical for my surroundings and was in keeping with what my friends all wore because we were all being practical. The walk to school was half an hour so I wasn’t ever going to do that in stacked heels even if we imagine I can walk in anything other than flats.  A lot of the places where I walked were damp and muddy.  A pair of suede ballet pumps were never going to cut it.  Jeans, of course, started out as work wear so are eminently practical for all sorts of environments and they can also withstand a great deal of washing.  I moved to Argyll at approximately the same time as I became a mother so the two influences, rural setting and parenthood, evolved and cemented my style.  Gone were the skirts and pretty tops from my days as a High School teacher and on with the jeans and tunic tops (easier for breastfeeding and for not having to buy maternity clothes – wise investment since I was either pregnant or breastfeeding for 8 years).

When we travelled into Glasgow was when I became more acutely aware of the fact that I had adopted a style somewhat out of kilter with my urban counterparts.  There I would see perfectly groomed, fashionable women in stacked heels pushing immaculate, pristine buggies (strollers) around the city centre.  Meanwhile I was in my scrubbed up version of my mum uniform (meaning checking that the jeans I was wearing were perfectly clean and as devoid of fabric skuffing at the hems as possible) and my baby was being pushed around in a buggy that was splattered with mud from walks along the canal bank or a forest trail and battered and buckled from being shoved in the boot (trunk) of the car on long journeys or thrown around in the belly of an aeroplane.  However, my look was justified by my home environment and, of course, I was comfortable.  Comfort always comes first for me.

But now I am living in American suburbia and maybe I need to revise and edit my style again.  Certainly I don’t need to limit myself to sturdy walking footwear anymore.  I now even own a pair of plimsolls with sequins on them.  My hair is still scruffy but I am cool with that.  My hair is bad and I have a phobia about hairdressers so my hair is never going to be anything other than scruffy.  But maybe I could explore broadening my wardrobe beyond the staples that have been my mum uniform for the past eleven years.  I still want to be comfortable and confident and feel like me, of course, so I don’t think there is going to be any massive makeover, just a few tweaks here and there as I gradually replace old, worn out clothes with new bits and bobs.  I may even start to wear more of my jewellery again since I have a pretty reasonable collection that I barely ever wear these days.

I definitely won’t be wearing yoga pants in public though.  Never.  The world is a better, happier place without that in it.