Art and Writing Practice

It’s been some time since I last wrote a blog post. I’ve been continuing my art and writing practice while also working.

Below is my latest portrait. I’m continuing to practice my portraiture skills and my crosshatching skills. This is portrait 29 of 100.

Below are some progress photos of my most recent portrait.

    

 

 

 

 

 

 

The inspiration photo came from the Sktchy app and this is another artist in that community. I had a lot of fun capturing his squinting eye, practicing proportions and capturing the way he looked at the camera with one eye open.

Below is another pen crosshatching portrait practice piece.

It’s the first one where I’ve drawn teeth and got them looking like they are sitting inside her lips. The green pen was fun to use and gives her a soft quality. The inspiration photo also came from Sktchy app.

Around all of my other drawing, I’ve been learning to use procreate and draw animal portraits.

Here’s the iguana I did with the Sktchy School class.

I’m so looking forward to developing my digital art skills and seeing how my creative life blooms with the mediums available on this excellent creative app.

I’ve also been writing a daily journal with the prompt: “Today, I noticed”. It’s a ten minute exercise where I either write in a paper journal or on my scrivener file and allow my daily experiences to flow through me and onto the page.

One of the excellent things about developing a daily journal practice is that it frees up my mind allows my creativity to flow. It’s really helping me to move through writing blocks and plot knots. As a result of daily journaling, my novel writing has sprung into life and I am thoroughly enjoying fleshing out the areas that need to change from telling to showing because I am not bogged down by mental thoughts.

Living a creative life means that I need to be willing to empty the mental and emotional bucket through writing and art. Creative living is a sanity saver for me and it reduces anxiety in my life. My brain has time to process other events happening in the background of my life and I am more in tune with life in a way that flows when I willingly come to writing and art.

I’m also touching on exploring memoir writing and personal essays of memories in my life. I love that writing gives me such a safe place for self expression.

If you’re interested in seeing my portrait art and my life drawing progress, I post most of my photos on instagram now. It’s a way of sharing without using up all my google space for photos. So I am choosing to only show select art here now. My instagram feed is on this blog if you’re interested in checking it out.

Thanks for dropping by and for checking out my blog. I’m in a weird place right now as I deal with some emotional home life stuff so I may not blog as often as I would like. Sometimes I wonder if I have anything to say that is worth reading… But maybe that’s anxiety talking and not the reality of the situation. I don’t know.

Anyway, I hope that as I explore creative living that I inspire you to explore your creative life too.

Until next time… have fun!