Brushing up old skills
Once again, its been a while since I posted to the blog. A lot has been going on; some personal things and some professional things.
Lately I just haven’t felt super jazzed to paint. I think the residual baggage from the situation I’m coming out of has kind of left me in a mode where the setup and cleanup part of painting has been unappealing enough to functionally squash any drive I had to paint once I’m sitting in front of the canvas.
So I’ve been going back to drawing for a while. I’ve become oddly fixated on drawing in white charcoal on this heavy-weight, black cold-press paper. I think just being able to sit down and go at a moment’s notice with minimal prep has been kind of unfettering for my creativity.
The Peter Steele portrait kind of kicked the whole thing off. I happened to be watching the Black No. 1 video on YouTube for some reason, and just suddenly felt like scribbling out a still from the opening scenes. My muse sat right next to me on the sofa the whole time, as the whole process from beginning to completion was easily an uninterrupted 45 minutes of scribbling and blending, and then scribbling some more.
I’m rather fond of this particular paper as well. If you’re looking for drawing material recommendations, the Stonehenge black aqua coldpress paper by Legion is superb. I’m currently working from a 10 x 10 inch pad, which means I need to get my hand on some more square-aspect frames, but worth it.