Finally!

I have obviously really been struggling since my vacation, but finally yesterday something broke. I ended up going down and pulling out all my in-progress works (there are five, not even counting the piles up in my studio that I'm making a fabulously great effort to ignore.) I put the largest watercolor that I sketched out aside, I wanted to make sure I was back on track before I started in on that one as watercolor is so unforgiving (this is the big one with the fairy and the unicorn from my last post.) I grabbed Alice, even though I had set her aside a while ago because everything just kept going wrong. I figured I wouldn't be working on her, but maybe when I made some progress on the others she would appeal to me.

I took over the kitchen table again. I pulled up the center expansion even, and then I proceeded to lay out all my paints and supplies and canvases and papers... and then I circled a bit. I walked from one room and to another, and each time with the mission that I just had to do this one more thing before I got rolling. It shouldn't be this hard, I was just going to do the two little watercolors to start (the twin dragons and the small unicorn.) That's easy enough. Right?

I decided to try another time-lapse photography film with my two watercolors, and given their small size, I'm decided to do them both together in the frame. It might be choppy, it might not work, but we'll see what happens! I got my camera all set up, and I even put the masking over the images I wanted to protect from my rather aggressive background application (I'm a heavy masker. If there was a way to do it without it, I'd love to know, but without fail I get paint on everything!)

All the while, I kept glancing at Alice.

I started pacing again while the masking was drying. And watching Alice.

Finally, I said to her (like a total crazy person, because talking to a drawn out figure on a canvas doesn't strike me as the most balanced of occupations) "I can make you today. I really think I can."

And right there, I tossed my plan out the window. I shoved the watercolors aside. I cleared a different space and started painting.

It was a struggle at first. Have you ever noticed that sometimes the paint just fights you? It's as if the last and most important ingredient in the recipe is missing. I knew it was there somewhere, and I had to fight for it, but after several hours finally... finally it clicked in. It took far longer to paint her face than it should have, but I wonder how much of that is due to working in watercolor on figures for so long (it really is a different process to switch from watercolors to acrylic, and when painting people I sincerely miss my oils as well. But this series is in acrylic, and I want to stay consistent with that.)

In person, her face fairly glows. I finally got her. HA! The rest of the painting will be so much easier comparatively. YAY!

I was closing up last night, realizing how exhausted I was from this fight with Alice, and I realized I had forgotten about the watercolors. I quickly, with the time-lapse on (although I wondered whether that was a poor choice), added in the backgrounds. So, all in all yesterday ended up being a good day in the studio!

Oh, I also got my postcards from my printer and they really came out wonderfully!

Aren't they cool? I'm going to start selling them, but given Etsy's fees it looks like I need to sell them either in person or on my main website. I only wanted to sell them for about $1 each, and a lot of these online venues like Etsy would end up taking most of that for themselves and I wouldn't cover my costs much less receive anything. Unless perhaps selling them in packs. That's a thought!