Speaking of Art Blog

For the past several months my artwork has been on the small-ish side, with 11x14” being the largest size I’ve rendered.  So I decided to go large with a couple of wildlife paintings.  First I completed an 18x24” pastel of some Cormorants living on a rocky ledge along the Pacific Ocean in Oregon.  When I photographed them two summers ago I was astounded at how calm they seemed as the high tide waves rolled in, crashing right below their precarious dwelling.  I wanted the water and waves to have impact, so a larger size was what was needed to achieve that.  I had never rendered so much moving water with a bird’s eye view of the crashing waves and seafoam before.  It was a challenging piece, but I am very pleased with the results.

Life On the Edge, pastel, 18 x 24”

Next I tackled another large challenging piece – a 17x23” pastel of a Twin-spotted Spiny Lizard.  I took my reference photo several years ago at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico.  The lizard was walking along on an orange adobe wall as if defying gravity.  I had stared at that gradated stucco wall in my reference photo several times over the past few years, not wanting to jump over that hurdle.  Similar to the crashing waves and seafoam of the previous painting, rendering that wall proved to be challenging but fun.  When I started, I had no idea whatsoever how to do it, so I experimented with layering, scumbling, and making random marks with as many as 12 different shades of burnt orange pastel on the surface.  Yes, that lizard is crazy detailed, but I know how to render tiny details using mainly pastel pencils.  But that stucco wall was my newest challenge.  And again, I was very satisfied with the results.

Wall Walker, pastel, 17 x 23”

Many times after I’ve rendered something new and challenging like with these two pieces, I normally don’t jump right in with still more paintings that tackle the exact same subject.  Usually I’m ready for something different, but a bit easier.  And while I’m pleased with my new found knowledge, I’m not dissatisfied with my artwork just previous to that new knowledge.  So it came as a real surprise to me when I started looking closely at my artwork from only 6 months ago and finding all kinds of flaws in it!  There were flaws I hadn’t even noticed before, but now were staring me in the face as I looked at them in dismay and thought, “How could I have missed that?”  Yes, I’ve done that with artwork of mine from 10 years ago, but from only 6 months ago?  Could I have just reached a whole new level of expertise with my ability?  Yes, that was indeed what had happened.  As I looked at my work from only months before these two pieces, I was seeing all kinds of places where I knew I could have chosen better colors, or rendered the lighting better, or cleaned up the composition, or taken care of some edges in a more successful manner.  It all seemed so obvious to me now.

What I realized was that achieving a higher level in my art making ability is not one of those things that I can doggedly pursue.  It will elude me.  What I have to do is simply keep raising the bar for myself and keep working at my craft, and suddenly it will, surprisingly, just happen.  And being critical of my previous artwork is not a bad thing.  That is a learning experience in itself.  I hope I never stop raising the bar for myself.  It is one of the main reasons my creative projects hold so much intrigue for me.  The creative journey is great fun, but so are the new heights I sometimes achieve as I successfully meet a challenge head on.  Crashing waves and stucco walls?  Piece 'o cake.