Big Paper

For Christmas last year, my great aunt gave me a pad of A3 watercolour paper. She is the notable art-supply-giving family member. Thank you Christine. I very rarely use watercolour, but nevertheless the thick, textured paper is really nice. I will try some watercolour on it at some point, but last week I tried some diluted acrylic and oil pastels over the top.

Pastels are a bit unwieldy to me, but I liked the way using them for line-art in the same colour as the paint blobs underneath worked. Turning blobs into recognisable creatures is essentially my one eternal quest.

I also used some pen, and in the process discovered that my permanent marker was now dry as hell. The pure contrast of a thick, dark pen on top of anything is always really satisfying to me, but it's a bit of a crutch when you're always reaching for it. I think one of my major goals when painting is to be better at forming shapes through light and shadow alone, but it's always a strange world to re-enter, one that's really different from the more cartoon-y, graphic stuff I make most.

Anyway, playing around is what matters most here. Just scribbling and scrubbling. I think being an online artist and being so posting-focused for a long time has affected how I look at my work a lot. Not in a bad way, particularly, but just in the sense of being aware of how "looked at" things are and evaluating them through that imagined lens. Formulaic thinking just sort of sinks into you when you're a "content creator" and it's always nice to totally remove an audience and just vibe. Although of course, I'm posting this too, but a blog isn't real. That's my playhouse. Don't even worry about it.