{"id":274,"date":"2003-11-10T22:44:16","date_gmt":"2003-11-11T06:44:16","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=274"},"modified":"2005-09-27T12:58:51","modified_gmt":"2005-09-27T20:58:51","slug":"frustrated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aprilgem.com\/log\/?p=274","title":{"rendered":"Frustrated"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are days I feel good enough about my art that I start sending out samples, trying to get work. On those days, my skin is so thick, rejections don’t phaze me; I just send my samples elsewhere and hope to catch someone off guard.<\/p>\n

This is not one of those days.<\/p>\n

I’ve been looking at other artists’ work, since I’ve been mostly unproductive. It’s akin to a writer reading other authors when the typewriter sits silent. But the more I look at other people’s work, the more dissatisfied I am with my own, and I’ve discovered that in my lazy shortcut ways, I’ve fallen behind in actual painting skills. I can’t, for the life of me, paint.<\/p>\n

Every time I draw a figure, it comes out cartoonish—features all exaggerated, colors crayon bright. I have a hard time with subtle shifts in hues and tones, and I can’t seem to get body proportions just right without some kind of reference.<\/p>\n

And umber. I have no idea what umber is. Or burnt sienna. Undertones are lost on me, and I see skin as one color, whether in shadow or in light. Instead of seeing hints of red or blue, I see dodge or burn. It makes me feel like an imposter.<\/p>\n

So I practiced some painting this weekend. I set out to “paint” something without using the dodge and burn tools, a Poser figure, or a reference photo.<\/p>\n

\"...a<\/div>\n

Then I realized why I stopped trying to “paint” my art. My lack of processing speed and RAM makes it too slow and time-consuming. My tempermental and jittery old Wacom Graphire pen—which I need to replace as soon as I can afford to—makes it too difficult and frustrating to control. My ignorance of the most basic painting techniques makes my attempt little more than a shot in the dark.<\/p>\n

And my lack of patience, heck. It makes me give up before I’ve even finished—just so I can go play around with making quick and easy Celtic knots or whimsy toons.<\/p>\n

\"...back<\/div>\n

I guess I don’t deal with frustration very well.<\/p>\nShare this post:

\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"reddit\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"tumblr\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"reddit\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"tumblr\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are days I feel good enough about my art that I start sending out samples, trying to get work. On those days, my skin is so thick, rejections don’t phaze me; I just send my samples elsewhere and hope to catch someone off guard. This is not one of those days. I’ve been looking at other artists’ work, since I’ve been mostly unproductive. It’s akin to a writer reading other authors when the typewriter sits silent. But the more…<\/p>\n

Read More Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aprilgem.com\/log\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aprilgem.com\/log\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aprilgem.com\/log\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aprilgem.com\/log\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aprilgem.com\/log\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.aprilgem.com\/log\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aprilgem.com\/log\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aprilgem.com\/log\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aprilgem.com\/log\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}