Dear Andy

This is a shitty likeness and yuck portrait. But...it means something to me.  a few years ago I lost one of my best friends to cancer. I have been wanting to do a portrait of him for a long time and after his birthday this year I figured it was about time to try. Unfortunately I didn't succeed well with this one but there will be others. I attempted to write a letter to him in the background by pressing hard into the paper and then covering it thinking that it would work as a resist. It worked very well with the white paper but with the darker paper it didn't show up quite as well. I miss my friend very much, I wish that he could meet my dog and I wish that he would have been around for certain movies and TV shows I know he would have enjoyed. But most of all I miss his laugh and is genuine smile and his brilliant mind. Dear Andy, I miss you.

Productive.

Apparently feeling like crap makes me make stuff. I have a sore throat...tired. Between gargles of salt water I sat on my ass and doodled all night.

Now I need a nap before dealing with some pressing family things.  I would rather deal with sickness anyday than a broken heart...even vicariously.

Goodnight for now. Hopefully I will waken stronger.

I need to be strong.

Bluebird

I decided to put a nest in his beard.  Calling it done. I suppose I should try to get better than phone photos...but sadly my phone is the best camera I have.

Finished-ish

My first two pastemat works. Calling them done. The fish is spoken for. The woman I just finished tonight.

Tomorrow I plan in working on the non-pastelmat surface...but it will be hard going back knowing I love the pastelmat so well!

More experimentation ahead.

Goodnight for now, Bambi Lynn

Pastelmat

My new paper came in the mail today from overseas. I kept reading about pasteles absolutely love this paper so I figured I would bite the bullet and just buy some.

Wow.

The difficulty with this is now I feel like I may never want to use a different kind of paper when pastel painting. The paper itself feels smooth but it grabs paper better than any of the sand sanded papers that I have tried.

There is a learning curve and I think I will have to plan drawings a little bit so that I do not lose light value, but in general this maybe be my new favorite paper. Which kind of sucks because its expensive as hell! The majority of my playtime I may need to be on different papers... but this is definitely going to be my choice for finished work.

That said I jumped into the below koi fish way quickly because I wanted to experience the paper asap! What you see below is the first session with me trying to learn how the pastels work with the paper.

I am about to start session two. Netflix on,  pastels up...lets do this.

Pans n Pencils

Oh my. It has been a few since I posted. I have kept instagram updated, but have neglected blogger! I have my full pastel set now. As well as some pencils....

...here is what I have been up to...

Doodling here and there and playing with color. Today I have an interview and it happens to be close to a Blick art supply. That will be happening. ;)

Panpastel eve

Today I get my 80 set of panpastels....this is what I have started with the ones I have.  Maybe by tonight I will have finished one of the portraits!

My new possible art love.

Panpastels.  LADIES AND GENTLEMEN...it is like a world has opened up with so many new possibilities.  My artistic panties are wet with anticipation at experiment to come.  I got my first sets today.  They sent me a wrong one....but they are all colors I will use...just all dark. So I ordered another set. I cannot wait to play. I think this may be the happy marriage of dry media I love (like charcoal) with the lushness of painting. I want all the colors. But mostly I will be excited to even get black and white!

What will I do first?

Probably....

Sept 18th

Had the day off for a trade.  Drew a little...experimented with clear gesso and canvas with charcoal (hated it).  And yet another portrait in my portrait book while watching House of Cards.  Now to the bed!

I probably should take better tham mobile phone photos of things. Or scan them.

But maybe only for finished larger work...we shall see.

More sketching

I ...  am missing something.  One eye is always off when I draw.  It eats at me. I need to figure out how to get it right. Practice practice.  It is odd to draw flat too...instead of sitting up looking straight at the drawing.

I am bringing my sketchbook to work again, for slower times.  I have decided to practice my portrait drawing by drawing from photos of police officers that line the wall of the PD.  I am calling it the "Cops off the wall in the hall" series in my sketchbook. The first one is below. As always...pencil pictures lose detail.

I also did a sketch based on an old picture of my sister.

Onward to the next...

Mom

I asked my Facebook friends for pictures of old and interesting faces. My mom sent me a photo from her phone camera that made me laugh out loud and I decided to sketch it tonight while watching a show.

Done and done.

So I finished the one portrait and started and finished another. I am starting to get the feeling of medium again, so I cannot wait for my new pan pastels to get here. I brought out an old sketch book to begin to sketch again on a daily basis. In general I am very excited about actually working again, the way I feel so much that my skill level has dropped in the time that I have not done anything!

So it is back to practice practice and enjoying the media.

Man I missed this.

A breath of fresh air...

It has been many years since I have posted here. I have a website at www.bambilynn.weebly.com. I even started a version of this blog for a daily sketch project inspired by my then boyfriend and artist Eric Shonborn. (www.shonborn.net)  I let that fall by the wayside too as I spiraled into an overwhelming black hole of "why bother."

"Why bother?"  How about because life just doesnt feel like life without making art of some kind? Because the worst of black holes is the one you create for yourself - one woven from your own mentality.

Yesterday I started a portrait from a picture off of the web...a tentative taste of my past love of charcoal drawing.

I missed this. I want more.

I want to wake up from my art sleep. 

This is me...shouting into the interwebs that I want to make shit again, get my skill level back, and have fun creating again.

This is me saying I am taking baby steps back to feeling like myself. I deleted all past posts for this particular blog...I am starting over.