A little splash of color

Well I am now two full weeks into my drawing class and I'm having a good time :)

The first class we practiced on a still life so we could have a record of our beginning 'skill' (or lack thereof). I've come to realize that I do not like still-life drawing.

The second class we practiced with blind contour and modified blind contour drawing. This exercise reinforced my belief that this is how many horror movie monsters are created...lol Wow!! - during the blind contour portion, my hand looked very similar to the failed transport experiment in the movie The Fly. Modified blind contour went much better as I could occasionally peek at what I'm working on. We ended that class period by beginning work with negative space. Negative space turned out to be one of those simple concepts that I had to walk away from to fully understand. I stared at my exercises wondering what I was doing wrong as things weren't going well. The next morning - I had absolutely no problem practicing it. Weird.

Class three was a bunch of fun! We started working with gesture drawing - something which I have a knack for even though I have never used this 'technique' before. (I guess you can say I excelled at scribbling...lol) I'm posting some of my gesture drawings here - partly so I can see my progress in class. Feel free to comment and offer tips.

Ah, the first of hopefully many entries to the new Live Journal account. My old account (Morganstargrove) is going to be 'closed' after I copy over any entries that I care to keep. It was time for Morgan Stargrove, the artist, to 'pass on', and so now I'm going to paint under my actual name - Jen Lee Suttorp. Well Jen Lee for short just because most people can't pronounce my last name. It got far to confusing to have to explain to someone who I painted under two different names as I had my fantasy work signed Morgan Stargrove (My faire persona) and Jen Lee for my abstract work. I can't even begin to tell you how many times people looked at me funny when they bought one of each style and I'd sign it with two different names. It got to be too much, let me tell ya!

So Jen Lee it is :)

In October, I'm going to begin posting my older pieces. Mainly so I can see my progress over the years. I have officially started working on a degree in art so I'd like to have a visual record on the pieces I've done and decent practice pieces. Now that I'm drawing and/or painting almost everyday, I'm hoping to improve even further before the end of the year.

And please feel free to comment and critique, but please make them constructive critiques. Just telling me that my work sucks does nothing to help me improve.

And with that being said, here is my new piece - Hold on Tight. This piece was drawn back in July and added to an ever growing stack of artwork that I needed to find time to work on. I managed to get her painted this week, and while she's far from perfect, I'm decently happy with her.