Better late than never

It's a month late and way overdue, but I still want to do a New Year's Resolution. I was totally unplugged the first week of January, so I think I will do it now.

Last year, I resolved to try to double the amount of time I spent painting. I didn't do quite that good - high goal! But I did work longer and harder. I'm pretty confident I can say I did more than 1500 hours working on art last year.

Not too shabby.

So why am I not an even better artist already? Hanging my head just a little I have to admit that I've got a fool for a teacher - me.

I know me: stubborn, thickheaded, slow to figure things out. It's a real nightmare having someone like that pretending she knows what she's doing while teaching you out of her ass ;)

But I have been making progress.

Enough progress that I have a new ambitious Resolution: This year I am going to tackle adding color to my ink paintings. I have never been a colorist. I have always focused on tone. But I have determined that I will find some way to work color into my paintings.

I have already begun by trying to learn the working properties of my colors. I am making them myself and while it may seem a no brainer to just mix them up and used them, it's not quite that simple.

First of all you need to figure out which colors mix well and which turn into a muddy, nasty mess.

Second, this paint needs to find a happy medium where it will hold onto the paper without bleeding when re-wetted but not so water resistant that it turns to flakes.

On the right you can see I have been working on some color charts. I fear there could be many more of those. Some of them came out quite beautiful, actually. In addition, I am also reformulating my paint. I am trying a couple different formulas that will hopefully cure enough to be useful by summer. I hope I can strike that balance between adhesion, water resistance, and beautiful color.

Once I work out the details the real work of making color a more natural part of my style begins. Look forward to that @@