koukla carolyn

I was looking at a photo of the inside of someone’s house and I saw this saying on a poster on the wall. I did a little reading and found that it was on a British propaganda poster made just before WWII. Right now it is the perfect piece of propaganda for me. I seem to be very depressed lately and when that happens my usual tendency is to just mope around and do nothing. But this time, I have been trying to keep working on my art and trying to be as productive as I can. This weekend I’ve done more artwork than I usually do:

Magnolia, staedler pigment liners in kraft paper sketchbook, 2008

Guest House View, Dhanbad; dip pen and watercolor wash on 5×7 Strathmore watercolor greeting card, 2008

Onion Sketch (EDM 179), graphite in kraft paper sketchbook, 2008

Self Portrait with Smile, graphite in kraft paper sketchbook, 2008

At work, I just wrote my mid year review, where I updated my progress on all my development goals. I thought this would be a good opportunity to review my art goals as well, because the year is half over. My first goal was to practice daily sketching. Although I can say that I’ve been doing more sketching than ever before, it has hardly been daily. I have been tracking my activities and I’m lucky if I do artwork on half the days in the month. June was especially bad because of all the upheaval from my vacation. So I’ll try to do better in the last half of the year.

My second goal was to continue working in watercolor. I have been awful at this and I think I did more watercolor in 2007 than this year. I just bought a bunch of M. Graham watercolors as well and I really want to try them out. I think I am nervous because they were so expensive but I need to get over it.

Lastly, I wanted to take some sort of art class or workshop. I have been looking for something near where I live, but I have not been able to find anything. I am limited to weekends unless I find something really local, but I might have to go into Massachusetts if I can’t find anything. In any case, I will have to wait until the fall until anything is available.

All in all, I’ve been pretty awful at keeping my art resolutions but I have done some really nice things this year regardless. Even though I have these nice development goals for myself, I have a ton of things I want to get done for Christmas so I had better get busy if I want to get them done in time.

Balcony View, dip pen and watercolor wash (5×7), 2008

This past weekend I spent some time reorganizing my Flickr page. I have things in there from 3 years ago and I haven’t looked at my old drawings in ages. I was very surprised that I have improved so much since I have really started drawing seriously three years ago. What surprises me the most is how much more colorful my artwork has become since then.

The above piece is a pen and watercolor wash sketch of the view from my sister-in-law’s balcony. I painted it on a watercolor greeting card and I am planning on sending it to India as a thank you card for our trip. I’m really happy with the way it came out because I was not very serious about it and I had no expectations of what the results would be. I didn’t even sketch the scene out in pencil first, which what I usually do when I work in pen and ink.