Before the awakening

As I have said on the homepage, I will be documenting my art journey in this blog.  Before I started on this journey I thought art was an important part of my life.  Unfortunately, I was one of the many “I wait for inspiration” artists.  Being a very busy homeschooling mom of three children and having a life full of activity meant that inspiration only struck once every now and then.  Until now I had no plan for improving my art.  I had no goals other than painting when I felt like it and that made me feel as if my art had reached a plateau I could just not break through.  In this post I will share some of my art before my awakening, this will serve as a background to the progress I know I will see through hard, dedicated training of my skills.

 

Here are some of my drawings spanning a few years.  The sketch on the left I did many years ago, the middle one was done about five years ago and the sketch on the right I did a few weeks ago.  I have a Facebook page for my painting work as well as more sketches for you all to look at. Facebook page link

What created this shift in my mind from mediocre artist to the desire to become a master artist?  I wanted more, I wanted to carry more emotion in my work and I did not want to be the slave to my reference photos anymore.  This meant that I wanted to see a painting in my mind and be able to paint it as I saw it.  I have never been able to do that.  I could draw anything from a photo, but I could not change the lighting, change the stance or change anything to suit my composition better.

I did some research online and stumbled upon the YouTube clip below – it changed my life!

 

And so my journey started with a bang!  I wanted to start my training right away!