Thursday Art Walk

 

In Which I Have Painted

I hoped this week that getting my painting done on Wednesday would mean the blog going up before 3PM, but... I'm sometimes quite tortoise-y and forget to actually start the typing. for instance, this blog page got opened an hour ago, and I'm just now adding text lol!

In my defense, however, there was another kerfuffle with the scanner(s), and frankly, I am shocked that I'm even conscious after all the running around I had to do.

See, our scanners and printers (multiples because my dad does a bunch of stuff for his hobbies/extra work like managing the music for the jazz band and keeping track of memberships for his small country golf course) are all in the basement, and I don't know how to use half of them because my brain is a sack of pinkish pudding in a bone-bowl 90% of the time. I work from an upstairs bedroom, and the living room and kitchen are between the scanners and myself.

This means that I have to go up and down two sets of stairs with two social spaces between. If someone's in the living room or kitchen (a fair bet after 11AM), then I'm going to get distracted. Even if no one's there, I still get distracted because coffee is delicious and my will is weaker than a tissue paper bridge over an arroyo during flood season. Add to that the fact that my memory is about as good as that of a 1989 computer whose CMOS hasn't been changed in the intervening years, and you've got a frazzled, coffee-soaked artist who keeps forgetting artworks either upstairs or in the cellar.

And then you add in the fact that sometimes the scanner just... won't work.

I've noticed that the first time you try to scan something from the black scanner, it freezes on the computer end, but the scanner is still trying to work, so you can't actually just... restart the scan. You have to get up from the computer, go down to the cellar, manually cancel the scan, go back upstairs, then restart the preview from there, reset the parameters, and pray that the darn thing scans.

"But Casual," you may ask, "Why not bring your computer to the scanner so it's easier to troubleshoot?"

Well....

Uh...

Okay, I'll be real, I never think to do that, but mostly that's because of my abysmal luck with batteries failing at important junctures.

Also I'm terrified of the cellar spiders and don't like to be down there any longer than I have to.

And the lights turn off from the top of the stairs only, so if someone doesn't hear me down there, they might turn off the lights and I'm a wimpy little wiener who's still scared of the dark.

And now you know my deepest secrets...

Anywho, here's what I worked on this week!

"Sketches" Watercolor; 2022

This piece is a small warmup where I was picking which category I wanted to go with this week! The shapes represent the GEOMETRIC category, the little cottage is LOCATION, the squirrel is of course an ANIMAL, the purple spire is an amethyst spear and therefore a MINERAL, the pinkish blob is supposed to be a mushroom which I count as a VEGETABLE, Dedbert is DEDBERT, the word Hope is sketched out for the WORD category.

This week's category proper, however, was ANIMAL!

"Frogi" watercolor on cotton paper; 2022

I took a very loose approach to this frog with only the vaguest outline, and I splashed random colors from my Peter Pauper Press palette on. I quite like the messy background, which I feel gives it an out-of-focus-rainforest vibe!

If you'd like a say in what I paint or draw next week, definitely check out the "commissions" page I have to see the different categories (also listed under the sketch before Frogi!). It's just one Ko-Fi, and they've got a messaging system that I'll absolutely see!

Back on the topic of scanning, though, I think I should look into a sheet of black poster board or construction paper to help me find the edges of my scans. If you're someone who does a lot of scanning, do you have any suggestions to help make things easier for myself? I know I probably don't need to be scanning at as high a dpi as I do, but... honestly, I don't know what I'm doing.

The joys of having to choose between which art you want to focus on in High School. You don't have to scan to play the flute.

Anywho, I'm gonna get back to untangling Gordon the Gordian Knot of blue DK weight acrylic yarn, and hopefully I'll be talking with my guy and watching some author chats with him!

Hope your weeks are going well!

Go Enjoy Something!

FC