A few posts back I mentioned that I rarely stray out of my artistic comfort zone. I am not good at acrylic so I don’t use it often, pastels are even worse, oils are only good if I treat them like watercolor paint and overload them with linseed oil, and pencils and pens are fun to doodle with but I am not brilliant at it. At the risk of sounding obnoxious, I would say that I am good at watercolors, and I am good at painting portraits. As hard as it is for me to admit, it is time for me to own up and confess:

I paint the same s*** over and over again. I paint my friends because I know the outcome will look good, that it will make them happy, and that the process won’t cause me to rip my hair out. While that is all well and good I have decided that I need a challenge, I need to push myself out of my artistic comfort zone in order to really see what kind of art I am capable of. 

What brought all of this on you might ask? Remember that giant blank piece of watercolor paper that I showed you in my latest blog post? Well I spent 15 odd hours (give or take internet distractions) drawing and painting on it. The subject? The Aaron Copeland School of Music. I would never paint that building by choice. I don’t find it particularly aesthetically appealing, and it doesn’t mean anything to me. Buildings to me represent tedious hours of sketching and erasing, making sure lines match up, that the perspective is right. This is why I don’t paint landscapes typically- they’re hard. 

I made an exception for my friend Mohamed. He and his girlfriend are flying back to the US tomorrow to attend his cousins wedding, and this painting will be their wedding gift to the bride and groom who met in this building.

 In the hours spent toiling over this painting as opposed to studying for my midterms and or sleeping I realized the main difference between painting my friends and painting a landscape. When you paint a face, even though there are different levels of shading, color, lines, etc. that you have to work with- at the end of the day you are only painting one object, one thing, you can blend everything together and take liberties with color because you can push the water all over the page and you will still be looking at a face. With a landscape you have to tackle foreground, background, trees, sky, buildings, sidewalks, trashcans- and you need to approach each object as its own mini-painting. That’s why it took me 15 hours to finish this one and only 7 or 8 for my portraits (2 for the postcards). 

By the time I was finished with the painting I had undergone some kind of artistic revelation- I’m not sure if it was due to the caffene, the fact that I had only gotten 4 hours of sleep in the past 48 hours, or the Juana Molina that was pumping through my headphones but I found myself smiling. The painting was, for lack of a better word, a bitch to complete, but by the time I was done I was happy with it.

The thing is, I know I can do better work. If I practice, if I paint more landscapes, do more sketching, then maybe I can make my landscapes look as good or even better than my portraits! I have had an incredible past twelve months and have been fortunate enough to travel to 9 new countries. Being the camera whore that I am I have thousands of pictures from Morocco to Taiwan and I’m starting to think that maybe I should turn one of those pictures into a painting. 

This is where yall come in. I have decided that once I am done with the other two people-paintings I already have started- I will begin painting a landscape of each country I have traveled to this year, starting with Morocco. I can’t decide which one would be better to paint so if even one of you readers would give me input as to which of these 4 photos you’d like to see done in watercolor leave a comment. The photo with the most support will be painted by the end of April.

Meknes

Merzougah/Sahara

Essaouira

ChefchaouenMoulay Idriss

And with that I must leave you all seeing as I am now on Spring Break and I have to go visit my dear friend Charlie Bice in Barcelona (!!!!!! I get to show my upper arms!!!!!!!) But I digress, look forward to travel sketches, sneaky museum photos, and more inspiration to come.

<3 always 

In honor of my most recent watercolor subject, I would like to start this post off by a quote from another of my favorite Wills…

“Where art thou muse, that thou forget’est so long, to speak of that which gives thee all thy might”

-William Shakespeare, Sonnet 100

William M.T. (watercolor)

My muse is a flighty mistress and she has not visited me in many months. She does not visit me terribly often and when she does, it is usually for no more than a few days- moving me to work through the night to whip out 3-4 paintings in one week. Sadly she comes to me less than three times a year, the rest of the time I am forced to find my own reasons to create. Why then, have I been painting up a storm this past week? Desperation. 

A few weeks ago I posted about how I paint to avoid other obligations. But what happens when painting becomes an obligation? It is at these times that you must pump out creativity like there’s no tomorrow because you have bigger things to satisfy than your own artistic ego. Just think of Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel ceiling. That man worked on that ceiling for four years often in great physical discomfort. Do you think his muse told him to do that? I find it hard to imagine that his muse told him to spend that much time either laying on his back or standing with his head tilted backwards for the sake of art. It seems more likely that money and religious fervor had bigger parts to play. Artists are not selfless people. We create when it makes us happy, keeps us sane, or when we get some kind of reward for it.

I currently have two such selfish reasons to create.  First I need to submit a portfolio of recent art works (due in a week) as part of an application and the second my friend Mohamed is commissioning me to paint his wedding gift to his cousin (due in 5 days). In the week or less that I have to meet these deadlines I will be incredibly crunched for time. Midterms are coming up here in Jordan and I will be camping in the desert with camels for 27 days. While I do not enjoy being pressured into productivity, I can’t say that good things don’t come out of it- like the painting at the top of this post.

I met Will in Savannah, GA, almost three years ago at art camp. In the magical week that we were together Will and I became fake husband and wife. During our fake wedding ceremony I vowed to honor our union with a painting. In the time that it took me to deliver on that promise we fell out of touch, communicating only with the annual Facebook “Happy Birthday,” message. I am happy to say that this painting has brought us back into communication and revived our fake marriage. Win:

William Mannie Toussaint Whoa this is awesome! I don’t care how far out of the country you are, we’re still married and I can’t wait til you come back to the states. This is so sick. Thanks love. =)

In addition to the above success, this week’s painting scramble made me search for new art supplies. Up until a few days ago I had no idea where to find art supplies in Amman. Luckily, Mohamed’s girlfriend knowsof a library that stocks every kind of art supply you can imagine on Istiklal Street. I admit that I had low expectations when first entering the library, but as soon as I saw 2x4 foot watercolor paper, all of my reservations vanished. Having been confined to working on 9x12 inch or 3x5 inch watercolor sheets, the new possibilities for future works of art made me incredibly happy. I walked out of that store with a new watercolor set, a new watercolor pad, and two massive sheets of watercolor paper. It was a glorious event . That being said, I have yet to start the massive work for Mohamaed and I need to find time to finish it in the next five days.

 The following photograph shows the giant watercolor paper I just bought, 4 paintings in various stages of completion, my watercolor sets, and my awesome tiger bed spread. Enjoy and stay tuned to see more fruits of my desperate-for-more-time labor.

Love!

Janna Powell- 3x5 inches, Watercolor

Last week I finished this painting. Considering that it’s the size of a postcard it took me 3 months to finish. That’s what I get for traveling and being easily distracted. Janna is another friend of mine from back home. The photo that I used for reference shows her entire head and part of her upper body, but I wanted to focus on her expression. I saw a piece on http://h2ocolor.tumblr.com that was just someone’s eyes in blue and it was stunning. I don’t think I’m at the level where I can just paint one facial feature and call it a day, but by zooming in I feel like I’m taking steps to get there

I will be the first to admit that I have a tendency to paint what I am most familiar with: the faces of my friends and family. I have little patience for still lifes and landscapes, always have. It wasn’t until my freshman year of high school when my art teacher told us how some of the greats, like Van Gough, would use grids to gague perspective for their paintings. Even more shocking to me was the idea that one could use a photograph as a reference for a painting.

Now there are many different opinions on the legitimacy of this. Purists like to draw from life, saying it is more of a challenge to get the right perspectives and lighting when you are sitting, in the flesh, with your subject. Others argue that the method is not nearly as important as the execution and the final product and prefer to draw from photographs.

I lie somewhere in the middle. There is definitely something to be said for being able to draw from life, that’s why I keep a sketchbook- but when it comes to me wanting to create a painting, I don’t want to have a time limit. When you work with human subjects there is only so long that you can expect a person to sit in one attitude. Me, being the person that I am, like the freedom of starting a painting one month, and finishing it two months later, of being able to have my subject in motion if I want to. That is why I work from photographs.

While some of my paintings are from photographs of friends that I’ve found on facebook, most of them I have taken myself with the intention of painting them later. This is where photo adventures come in. Every month or so I gather a few of my friends and set them loose around town, taking candid shots, making them pose, and seeing if any of the pictures would make good paintings. Just because it’s a good photograph does not mean it will make a good painting. The composition, colors, background, all need to “speak” to me before I decide to paint it. In other words, before I paint a picture of you, I have to feel as though I’ve truly captured you- your essence, posture, etc.

In any case, last weekend a few of my friends and I went on an adventure in our neighborhood Shmeisani. Next to the local mosque is some kind of dilapitated-hobo-shelter-type-ruin and it provided a nice artistic background I think. From there we went to a tiny park down the block where we played around on the swings and generally had a good time. I have a few paintings I want to get done before I start on painting a photo from this latest adventure, but I thought I would share a few of my favorite shots….