Drawing 10 for #draw365

Being sick means I just do what I can and go easy on myself when the details are just too much. So her eyebrows and the pretty braided cord she wore in her hair are barely presented here. This drawing started out as a quick contour drawing. Can you see that?

I’m told that over time artists develop their own personal style. I know that you can easily tell when I am the artist who created an altered book. And I definitely have a style in my abstracts and in my seascape paintings. But in my drawing I didn’t really see it myself.

Until I started creating these contour drawings that I would then develop further. The mouths and the noses always have that same feel to them. I do not start with that thought in mind. And am usually surprised when the drawing nears completion and I see it there. That something that tells me she looks like her contemporaries (my other contour drawings). In fact I think if I rounded them all up together they would look like a family.

I have been playing a bit with crosshatching in the eyes lately. It’s that mix of realism and illustrative that I so enjoy.

I have slept more this weekend than I do all week, or so it feels that way. And now that my drawing is done I think I will play in my art journal. I have three paintings in progress right now and they are beginning to press in and give me guilt. I really need to get to work on finishing them. I just need to get a little more energy back first.

I wonder, do other artists feel guilty if they are not working on their paintings?