dianeseattle
Member
I'm really excited because I'm about to leave to go pick up an overhead projector someone is giving away. It feels strange to say I'm an artist, since I'm a writer and a mediocre musician as well, but all my life I thought I was going to grow up and be an artist, or and English teacher. Art is the thing I was drawn to, while literature and words were the things I could not refuse to do. I have to write. You've all be subjected to that here.
So I use an overhead projector when I need to enlarge an image onto a bigger piece of paper or canvas before applying pencil or paint. I went out last week and bought a new sketch pad and some canvas panels so I could do that, as all my art supplies are in storage since the big Freak Out of October 25th. I haven't even opened up the box of oils I bought or drawn a pencil line since, and because I don't have a studio or group or class, I don't get to work with live models. I draw from pictures and sometimes I use the projector because it's hard to get accurate proportions while holding your sketchpad in your lap.
These are a coupla drawings of mine from many years--more than 40--ago. The angel is a detail from a da Vinci painting, "Virgin of the Rocks." The snowy egret is just something I drew from a magazine photo. The angel is a bad photocopy. I gave the original away to a friend I loved. I keep the egret in one of my many portfolios. But I sold or burned most of my really good stuff so I can't show you how accomplished I actually was.
Back in the day, I was an ovee chick (that stands for ovaries, which are way tougher than balls and really define us as women with brass ones) who had no idea tragedy lay ahead because my emotions would end up ruling me instead of my successes. I graduated cum laude in art/english and was accepted at Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, one of only 60 candidates who made it, though thousands applied. It had been my dream since I was a kid, to go to Otis.
There was a lot of wreckage that I wasn't able to get past back then and in the 40 years since.
I let my out of control emotional life drive me. It wasn't my fault I was beaten and abused every way you can beat or abuse a child, but I had no idea the PTSD was a trauma lying in wait. For most of my life since I was 17, I went down a path to self-destruction, squandering gifts in the name of finding a man who loved me. I wasn't prepared to fix myself and in the late 1960s, there just weren't that many supportive outlets and resources for a young woman like me. I thought I needed a man. So I've been in therapy for suicidal ideation/gestures since 1974. Goddammit, my emotions are forever enmeshed in my art, writing and music.
Lately, though, I decided to get back into art and I have done hundreds of drawings in other sketchbooks, all of which are really poorly executed. The drawing mind, like a muscle, needs to be built up and set free, and mine is still a bit bound by traumatic events and my own fear and sadness about the world I live in.
But now, I'm off to get that projector & when I return, I'll be casting a rough line of a photo onto paper, I'll then sit down and draw, as well as starting two oil paintings I've been planning to do for a few years.
This is just for me, and I'm celebrating as well as I have the capacity to do so. In days or weeks, I'll share that with this group, but now, it's time to start.
So I use an overhead projector when I need to enlarge an image onto a bigger piece of paper or canvas before applying pencil or paint. I went out last week and bought a new sketch pad and some canvas panels so I could do that, as all my art supplies are in storage since the big Freak Out of October 25th. I haven't even opened up the box of oils I bought or drawn a pencil line since, and because I don't have a studio or group or class, I don't get to work with live models. I draw from pictures and sometimes I use the projector because it's hard to get accurate proportions while holding your sketchpad in your lap.
These are a coupla drawings of mine from many years--more than 40--ago. The angel is a detail from a da Vinci painting, "Virgin of the Rocks." The snowy egret is just something I drew from a magazine photo. The angel is a bad photocopy. I gave the original away to a friend I loved. I keep the egret in one of my many portfolios. But I sold or burned most of my really good stuff so I can't show you how accomplished I actually was.
Back in the day, I was an ovee chick (that stands for ovaries, which are way tougher than balls and really define us as women with brass ones) who had no idea tragedy lay ahead because my emotions would end up ruling me instead of my successes. I graduated cum laude in art/english and was accepted at Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, one of only 60 candidates who made it, though thousands applied. It had been my dream since I was a kid, to go to Otis.
There was a lot of wreckage that I wasn't able to get past back then and in the 40 years since.
I let my out of control emotional life drive me. It wasn't my fault I was beaten and abused every way you can beat or abuse a child, but I had no idea the PTSD was a trauma lying in wait. For most of my life since I was 17, I went down a path to self-destruction, squandering gifts in the name of finding a man who loved me. I wasn't prepared to fix myself and in the late 1960s, there just weren't that many supportive outlets and resources for a young woman like me. I thought I needed a man. So I've been in therapy for suicidal ideation/gestures since 1974. Goddammit, my emotions are forever enmeshed in my art, writing and music.
Lately, though, I decided to get back into art and I have done hundreds of drawings in other sketchbooks, all of which are really poorly executed. The drawing mind, like a muscle, needs to be built up and set free, and mine is still a bit bound by traumatic events and my own fear and sadness about the world I live in.
But now, I'm off to get that projector & when I return, I'll be casting a rough line of a photo onto paper, I'll then sit down and draw, as well as starting two oil paintings I've been planning to do for a few years.
This is just for me, and I'm celebrating as well as I have the capacity to do so. In days or weeks, I'll share that with this group, but now, it's time to start.
