successful spilling

another late post. however, i feel rather accomplished, i have "spilled" daily and posted the results almost daily since the night i cleaned my desk off.

i've been busy tonight and i should be sleeping but i spent a relatively lazy sunday cat napping on the couch and watching football because i wasn't feeling well for the most part. so, now i'm not tired.

i have a few classes i've paid for and made very little headway on in the past two years, but i really didn't feel like taking on those challenges tonight. tonight i decided to tip-toe my way into a free class offered by the very awesome tamara laporte called art, heart, & healing in hopes of providing my brain with a much needed refresher of many very basic techniques.

well, here's what happened.
but first, for fun...

mmmmm a brand new knead-able eraser. you know you want to smell it!

the beginning of the first project requires one to write down all the things your inner critic says on one of the two pages of the spread. all those nasty hurtful things that make me feel a whole lot less like a barefoot glittery princess. i've shared the spread but only after covering the page with gesso, because, while i love to share my art with people (because if i can do it, so can you), i am much less keen on the idea of sharing just how nasty and mean my own inner critic can be. plus, the idea here is to write it down, get it out of your head, forgive the inner critic, and then cover it up with paint and make something beautiful out of it.

so, onward!

yay for putting the smack down on the inner critic.

opposite page of the spread is where i start my drawing. i am supposed to draw a girl that represents me. represents. she will not look anything like me.

ugh, i haven't drawn a face in over 3 years.

face complete, sorta...

i had A LOT of trouble with the nose, this trouble did not relent.

i really like to draw stylized and whimsical girls, so that is where i am headed.

yeah, mitten hands. what about it? i can barely draw a nose and you want hands? pshya!

so, my watercolor crayons, acrylics and i just aren't getting along whilst i shade this face. time for some... fun!

one of my FAVORITE mediums, prismacolor pencils and a blender.

after much more back and forth on the face, i reached a stopping point that i was relatively happy with. now you can see the direction i am going in.

done! (for tonight)

sure, she is far from perfect and there is A LOT of work to be done still. but i am a happy girl at the moment and my inner critic has been (mostly) quiet all night.