I am calling this my eleventh gouache painting, even though technically that isn't correct: this was done on a 4-by-6 canvas board and all my other gouaches were on paper, and the paint calls itself acrylic paint rather than gouache. Bear with me while I explain:






This was my first time trying Deco Earth brand “reclaimed acrylic” paint — claims to be more opaque and more matte finish than regular acrylic. The opaque is maybe a bit true, but the matte finish is way true. It's a lot like working with acrylic gouache IMHO — hence my labelling it such. Handles nice and I look forward to working with it again. (Even though the range of pigments available to work with leaves a little to be desired, I think.) 

My 52^nd and 53^rd acrylics are, as you can see, both pups. One is a gift, one is for putting up at the cafe and [hopefully] selling. I've already realized that my animal paintings are the closest I get to “crowd-pleasers”. So, when it comes time to make a gift, that's what I fall back on. But I've also already begun to wonder how much these paintings actually qualify as fine art. Like, do they say anything? Do they express anything about me? Maybe they're just an expression of “my love of animals”, and maybe that's enough, I dunno....

On the other hand, I can think of an artist I see on Instagram who only ever paints horses, and she quite cheerfully admits that's all she ever has any intention of painting, because that's what she loves most. And I've never questioned her legitimacy as An Artist®, so why do I need to question my own?

On the third hand, lately I've gotten more of an urge to spend at least some of my easel time working on less accessible pieces — I can feel things in me wanting to get out. I've already resigned myself to those new pieces not being understood or enjoyed, but I still feel like they'll be worth trying anyway.

Getting back into The Painting Groove®.

It's been weeks [months?] since I painted, largely due to adverse health circumstances, but also lack of ideas-slash-inspiration. But the deadline of Christmas looming has been making me fret, and I owe some people paintings as gifts, so I finally panicked enough to force myself once more into the breach.

I've noticed that, whenever I'm away from painting for a while, I eventually get to feeling like I have forgotten how. I lose what little confidence I've developed, and start to believe that whatever I produce now won't be any good. [Something similar happens with cartooning, but that feels more like gotten rusty than don't remember how.] But, in the last couple of days, I have finished the gifts that absolutely had to be done, and once I got about a third of the way into each one, I realized that they were turning out Okay Enough®, and I started feeling like I have a clue again.

I realize that the solution is “don't go so long without arting”, but this is me we're talking about here, so....

Over the past five years, I have read a lot of books, articles, posts, etc. about "how to paint". Most of them offer advice along the lines of things you should or shouldn't do. Rules, or at least rules of thumb.

In that same period, I have seen each one of those rules broken [successfully] by at least one artist producing a good piece in their own lawless fashion. Sometimes that artist has even been me!

Selling a painting: someone bought the Sheltie a couple days ago. Making a sale is still such a novelty for me that it feels like a big deal. [To be fair, I always felt that that painting had the most curb appeal of any of mine, so I always expected it to be the one that would go.]

My 45^th acrylic is a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. [I'm showing it after #46 cuz this one was a gift and I waited til it was received before making it public.] I find myself wondering if I should've made the green background lighter so that the dog's head would stand out more distinctly. But I also realize that I like how the dog's brown and the background green are similar in value, to create fewer, larger and simpler shapes of light and dark values, to make a stronger composition. I am unusually aware this time of the distinction between how the work functions as composition vs. as depiction.

[It also made me realize how often I make decisions like this in cartooning, composition vs. depiction, and I realize that, in that medium, clarity of depiction is always most important. Sometimes we downplay conventional rules of composition to make the image communicate with more clarity and immediacy.]

learning something about my self-talk

I had a sudden epiphany today. [This may sound painfully obvious to you, but it's new to me, bear with me, okay?]:

I was looking at one of my paintings, and suddenly asked myself, "What would I say about this painting if a friend made it and showed it to me?" And I realized I would be much more positive and encouraging — and really mean everything I said. So why not say those same things about the same painting when it's made by me?

Why not, indeed?

My latest paintings were both Christmas presents so I had to wait til their recipients got them before making them public, so here we go now:



My eighth gouache is supposedly a chipmunk. I still struggle with getting my paint to a good working consistency — straight from the tube it's too thick to spread easily, but it feels like when I add any water it instantly goes as thin as watercolour. There's a sweet spot in between that I keep missing.



My 43^rd acrylic is my house, as seen from across the street. You can't see much of the actual house frontage and porch from here, so it looks like mostly garage, but there is enough house back there to live in. Any other angle would be mostly tree, so if I wanted to get the whole building in, this was the best I could do.

My 41^st acrylic painting is... well I was going to say my first acrylic abstract, but it's actually my first successful one. [I tried once before, very early on, but was so dissatisfied with it that I painted over it... with something that was only marginally better, frankly.] At least, to me this one is a success: it turned out pretty much how I had in mind, from a visual idea that came to me back in the spring. But it took some reading about Abstract Expressionism over the past few days to give me the impetus to give this one a shot.

It's also my first painting to be given a formal title. I believe that a title can potentially contribute a lot to an abstract. And it's the first time I managed to get a bit of impasto work into one of my paintings — not sure how well that shows here, but IRL you can see it.

My 39^th acrylic is Barclay's Bank in York. I did it a few weeks ago, but it was an anniversary gift so I couldn't show it publicly til my missus saw it [so as not to spoil the surprise, eh]. I was so taken by the light here - so warm, even on a chill December day.