Dreadlocks

"Nude with Dreadlocks" - Watercolor on Fabriano Artistico CP - 12" x 18"

Good muses make good paintings.

Another Watercolor Figure

Painting the figure in watercolor is tricky. Watercolors don’t have the three-dimensionality of oils or acrylics, so it’s harder to build up the “meat” of a person in a painting. Sometimes it’s best to go for a looser, more abstract style.

I almost scrapped this painting. I tried to aim for a realistic style, and the paper didn’t hold up as well to scrubbing and lifting as I thought it would. Regardless, I saved this painting using the (only sometimes reliable) “fuck it” approach.

I Keep Coming Back to the Figure

Sure, the face looks a bit stiff. There’s some problems with the proportions of the head. And I wasn’t expecting Quinacridone Burnt Orange to stain as much as it did… but I’m getting back in the game.

One of the things I’ve been angsting about this summer is how I have yet to develop a signature artistic style. Not having a unique style can really hold an artist back. Without it, you can’t create a unified show to submit to galleries, and you can’t really gain an online following if you’re always spazzing out in a new medium. If you take a look at my portfolio, it looks like five different artists contributed to it. I admit: when it comes to art supplies, giddiness and experimentation often trumps stylistic consistency.

I’ve also given myself a hard time about how often I draw women. Because c’mon, every bloody male artist since the Renaissance has made his career off of scantily-clad white women. And the feminist in me does not want to make money off of naked women. (Not that I’m against naked women…or even making money off of your own nudity. But I am against making money off of other naked women, I think).

Anyways. So that anxiety has caused me to wander through a wide range of styles and mediums, thinking I’ll magically stumble across my strength—my artistic niche—like Jackson Pollock drunkenly spilling that first drop of paint on a canvas.

And yet I keep coming back to the figure. Figure drawing is my strength. It’s what I unconsciously doodle in the margins of my notes. It’s most satisfying to me to figure out how bones and muscle create shadows and curves. Drawing/painting the figure is also a way for me to explore social and political questions about gender, about self-presentation, and about how we view ourselves and each other.

Looks like the ol’ Nature-versus-Nurture debate strikes again. What do you think– do we make our own creative niche?