How to remain an artist

Pay good attention, should you like to paint beautifully and truly be in the moment with your art, to your 4-year-old niece.  (If you are lucky enough to have one - if not, steal one?)  Give her crayons and her own sketchbook and stand back!

After enjoying Elsa's art making today, I got inspired to play with my current painting (first layer snapped in previous post) while she watched some (odious) Care Bears.  Much to my initial chagrin, I couldn't find the photo I was using as reference among the bazillion photos on my laptop.  But I had the paints out and was in the mood.

In addition to being witness to Elsa enjoying the scooby-doos out of color, I'd just finished reading Creative Illustration Workshop by Katherine Dunn.  Her work is not slavish to capturing the exact images, but leans much more to expressing "what is the essence" of this thing.  She also loves to think about the story of an illustration.  All of this is very appealing to me - and I am just as happy to be illustrating as painting, for those who think there is some big distinction.


So I decided to mess around with this canvas and subject in that mode, knowing that if I want to do another layer later and head back toward the photo reference, I could always do that.


It was quite fun.  I think I'm going to let it rest and percolate in my head and heart and then paint again in a day or two.  Here's where it is now. 


"All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up."
Pablo Picasso