:hearts and bones:

Working away on my January artwork, down to the wire, I should be done in the next two days (well, I kinda have to be to meet the goal), I will probably add some color to this. I'll have to start earlier on future projects, thankfully I already have an idea for February.

For those actually concerned, I did try different clothing on sketches of her, but none really worked for me. She doesn't seem to mind, and even if her, er, companions weren't there I doubt that she'll feel threatened by any unwelcome attention. She's got a skull in her hair, fer gosh sakes.

A reminder for That Holiday next month, I have a few appropriate (?) images for sale through deviantArt (click link below image to go the relevant page):

clicky

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I also have actual valentine cards of the above image, including red envelopes, available through Etsy. I'm expecting more through the mail any day now, printed by the wonderful folks at Moo.

:love for sale:

Unless something magical happens within the next few weeks, I have no reason to celebrate Valentine's Day this year. But I do have a few artworks in that vein for sale, both on deviantArt, as prints and assorted other paraphernalia. This one:

And this one:

There's also a few Valentine cards with the above design available on Etsy. It'd be nice to finally see a sale from there, hint hint. I've also submitted these two to a local gallery, for an obvious-themed show, final word should be within the week, so fingers crossed.

I've also been working on two other works simultaneously, which is sort of a new thing to me, if you don't count the hundreds of unfinished projects in sketchbooks and such. This photo continues to progress and have more layers than anything I've done in the past:

And in the hopes of meeting my goal of a finished new piece each month, hopefully this one will be done some time in the next week or so. Just did some tightening up of elements from last week's sketch. She looks vaguely Asian now, which wasn't the original intent, but sometimes the artwork pushes me in a direction that I didn't start in.

:underpainting:

Even if it's still only the first month of the year, I'd like to keep on track with my goals, because look and see, the month is half over already. And one goal is to try and create one finished piece each month. I'm probably going to start simple and make something from images in my sketch-a-day book from last year. I found these characters in it and I think they might work well together:

I also returned to the photos from my shoot last fall; I fell off of my momentum over the holidays, I have no reasonable excuse, but this one is going to be multi-layered so perhaps there was some "fear" in beginning it? Ask my therapist.

This is in no way the final image:

:future archaeology:

As stated last week, one of last year's goals was met, I finished (save for only a few days) a sketch-a-day book, and I've gone back through it a bit. One of the possible for goals for the new year is to create at least one new completed piece per month, which is a goal I've meant to do before, but a lot of crisis' in the past few years put a wrench in that. so of course I am hopeful that there will be less of that in the new year. Don't we all hope that? And I think I may have a fair amount of source material in here to start off the year.

I think in the beginning I was trying for too much detail or trying too hard to be clever instead of just letting whatever came out of my mind first take control. Very little of it made sense, I usually closed the book right after drawing. Revisiting it now brought out many WTF moments.

But I never was much of one for normal subject matter. Perhaps this has held me back in some ways, particularly being employed for my art, but why draw boring art?

Sometimes when I got stuck or if it was nearing the end of the night and I still hadn't drawn something, I would copy something else, but I tried not to make an exact copy, either just drawing the shadows or using as few lines as possible.

Yes, women with yards of hair seemingly with a mind of its own seemed to be a reoccurring theme.

After doing this for nearly every day for a year I've been on a bit of a break, but I have to admit it feels odd not to be doing it, so I don't think it'll be long before I return to it, which is good, as it's a habit I wanted to return to and it was sad that it had disappeared to begin with.

:2013 rewind:

2013 was, thankfully, a lot more of a creative year than 2012, and, frankly, many of  the years before that as well. I feel that I still need more "recovery" and the atmosphere that I live in is still less than ideal, but, more goals for the coming year then, although, as often stated, I don't really make New Year's resolutions, and certainly not out loud, but I do try to check on myself each new month instead.

So one goal that was met for 2013 was the Sketch-a-Day book that I started on Jan. 1st. I ended up with 361 days filled, so I missed a few, but I seem to recall them being for good reasons, or at least taken up by other creative ventures. I'll probably review it for next week's entry.

I participated in a few gallery shows, to varying degrees. I hope to be part of more, so put that down as a goal for the coming year as well. I had high hopes for the RAW art show that I was a part of, but I left it feeling that it was an interesting experience and there's always a good thing about "exposure," but for the time and especially the money I put into it, not a good return on my investment.

I unearthed a fair amount of old artwork and sketchbooks, and will probably continue to do so, to see if any old ideas can finally come to fruition. Some things, I've found, have to remain dormant for years before they finally make sense to me.

I continue to take a camera everywhere with me, just in case something catches my eye. Instagram has started to take over the more candid shots, but that's mainly when I want to upload something instantly, or just want to play with the filters that it has.

I went to Dr. Sketchy's twice in the past year, hopefully I'll attend more often than that this year, it really is an interesting twist on the whole figure drawing thing. And I honestly haven't found a "normal" session locally in years.

I had two awesome model photoshoots after too many years of none. I made mistakes, surely, and a lot of them were corrected later, but I feel that I've learned and won't make the same ones again. Plus I've been taking an online course to learn more about the areas that I'm lacking in. Here's hoping I can persuade others to work with me, as I've stated before, I sadly have a history of people flaking out on me.



And I completed another Homunculus doll, again, after many years of not doing so.

So, despite stating not making a list of goals above, here are some for the coming year: more gallery shows, more photoshoots, learning to use the Wacom tablet, learn Adobe Illustrator,  and update the damn website already. I was thinking of just doing a Wordpress gallery. Any advice in that area would be most welcome!