Art In Your Own Head

I did the above painting late last night. It took me longer than most of my usual work does because I was so focused on some details. Once again, I still managed to keep it chaotic looking. I don't do well with realism. I can't do realism at all. Even when I try to draw a person, it comes out looking like a cartoon. So I had some different colors and layers to it to dress it up and give it more depth and texture.

I'm really happy with this painting. I know its no masterpiece, but I'm very proud of it. I had several things in mind as I worked on it. Mainly how collectively sad and stressed out we all are as of late.  This past month has been a rough year.

I'm not going to dive too deeply into all of that as I have other blogs that do a better job of it. I will focus on this art process. As someone with Bipolar, I tend to fall into comfortable habits. Doing the liquid abstract paintings are fun and relaxing to me. I love how they look, yet I feel I'm not always greatly pushing myself.

So that is what I tried to do with this one, push myself. Do something other than cute monsters and try to express some kind of emotion and I think I did that here. Not defending my own piece, anyone can look at it and have their own takeaway. This is just my own musings on it and where my head was at  at the time.

This also gives me some ideas for some other art going forward, but I'd like to not get into the rut of copying myself. That's something I do all too often.

I know the masters like Van Gogh, Monet and Picasso put out much better works and I don't pretend I can touch any of them in anyway shape or form. But I love their work and their styles even when more modern art is into realism or other things. I guess I'm kind of a throwback in that regard.

For a long time even when I was new new at art, I was trying to sell my drawings or paintings. Its not that I wanted to make money with them so much as I just wanted to share them with people. It all is very expressive for me, it all comes from deep within my soul and I wanted it to be seen, to be shared.

I learned quickly selling art is incredibly difficult. Over the last couple years, I got a few sales here and there, and appreciated every one of them. But its tough. Artists who sell a lot and sell high priced paintings, I don't know how they do it, but more power to them.

It was on an unplugged break from social media and everything I got the idea for this blog. Originally it was on blogger, but I soon realized I wanted better control of my own design and content and some other options and I learned about Ghost. So I moved it here and so far pretty happy with it. Several of my friends are on Substack and I did a whole piece about my choices HERE. My choice is either full or foresight and brilliance, or I'm missing a huge opportunity by being here instead of Substack.

One thing about me, and maybe this is why I'm a weird artist is I never did what everyone else was doing. People zig and I zag. That hasn't always worked out for me, I'll be honest. Sometimes I just end up all alone in some strange place. I feel good about this blog though and where its going, just trying to iron a few kinks out.

Back to the art, I hope this reasonates with you in some way. Here is the full painting.

Anyway, slightly shorter post today. I may do another blog later. I try to mix up the length on these posts too so they aren't so long winded. Thank you again for stopping in. Feel free to subscribe and comment to let me know what you think. If you have it in you to get a paid subscription, then I thank you even more. Until next time.