The Long Journey Begins

"Baby steps ... baby steps ... baby steps ..."

Mixing light greys came more natural to me than mixing dark greys.

It took me about 2 hours to walk from 0-10.

During the process, I remembered that values are relative and not everyone see values exactly the same.  My value 5 might look value 4 to you and that's o.k.

This is how the long journey begins.

Fifty Shades of Grey

I thought I was over the Grey Matter last year when I learn and practiced color theories and color mixing for quite some time.  Oh nooooooo ... it's coming back to haunt me again!

As I went through the step by step videos from PTO, I was confronted with the Grey Matter again

I don't know about you, but painting an accurate grey scale is not an easy matter to me.  Especially, when I compared the grey scale card (from The Color Wheel Company) I got at home to both the pdf and on-screen grey scale from PTO.  The same Value 5 grey on all these scales are different. To top this, I had another set of grey scale from the online course I did last year which did not match any of the one I just mentioned.

What am I to do with the fifty shades of grey?

Maybe I should just pick one I like and forget about the rest OR read the book which is currently a hot topics among women!

Somehow I need to get over this to move forward with my learning.

Sorry everyone, part of this crazy talk is my sore throat ranting its discomfort ...

Thanks for listening! ;)

Creative Resources

I've been wanting to share some of my favourite creative resources for a long time.  Since it will be awhile before I have anything decent to show, I'm making use of this interim to share some of my essentials resources with you!

1)  Andrew Loomis Art Instruction Download (FREE)

Andrew Loomis was a well known American Illustrator and an art instructor.  He had published quite a few art instruction books during his life time.  Some of them had become out of print.  But thanks to the good folks at Escape from Illustration Land, we are now able to download all of the books for free.

2)  Dover Publications:

In my humble opinions, Dover got one of the best collection of reference books on art images.  There are 2 of them which are my favourites.  I use them all the time.

- Plants: 2400 Copyright-Free Illustrations of Flowers, Trees, Fruits and Vegetables

- Animals: 1419 Copyright-Free Illustrations of Mammals, Birds, Fish, Insect

3)  Flickr:

What can I say?  One of the best place to find amazing photo about almost anything.

4)  Deviant Art:

Chalk full of young-and-upcoming artists' work plus tutorials for all mediums.

5)  YouTube:

(I can't think of any commentary to write about it, except the word AMAZING!)

6)  Color Lovers:

If you need inspiration about colors, head over to CL to have a blast!

7) Art Supplies (online store):

Though I love my country very much, in terms of source for art supplies, we have very limited supply here in Aussieland.  Apart from the most basic art materials, I got the rest of my art supply from online stores such as Dick Blick USA.

8)  Books on "Talent" and "Drive":

For decades, I had believed that writers, painters, musician etc possess natural born talent for their achievements.  And that artistic flair come to these creative people easily.  While mere mortal like me could only dream of being original or ever be great like them.   

The following 2 books help me to understand and to explain my own "unsettled" belief.  If you too have the same doubt about talent vs. hard work, I encourage you to read them and make your own judgement.  (BTW, if you have any eBook reading programme on your computer or own an eReader, you could buy them in eBook format.  The e-version is cheaper than the hard copy. My links are of Kindle version.)

- Talent is Overrated:  What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else (by Geoff Colvin)

- Drive:  The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (by Daniel H Pink)

7) Book on "Procrastination":

Every now and then, I need a straight to the face, no bullshit, even close to brutal reminder of what procrastination is all about.  Below is the book I'm currently reading to get over my procrastination.

The War of Art (by Steven Pressfield)

That's about it for now.  I hope you'll enjoy them as much as I do. And pls do share of your view on them with us.

Cheers and have a fantastic weekend!  xxoo

What's In My Sketchbook?

My sketchbook pages are filled with drawing exercises like last week.  So I'm not going to bore you with them. Instead if you would allow me a bit of a whinge ...

This week is very unsatisfying ...

- Extremely busy at work as the office was understaffed due to people falling sick one after another and at the same time, company asked some of our staff to take long overdue leaves.  I ended up working 3 people's job for the whole week.

(Usually, I work only 4-days a week and then focus on my creative projects the rest of the time.)

- Classic Melbourne winter weather - COLD and Wet.

- I'm feeling a bit out of sort ...I think I'm about to get sick.

- Then came the usual blockage which I need to go through before I could start any creative work.  Do you know what that is?  It starts with the letter P. It's called PROCRISTINATION.  How do I know that?  Here are the usual symptoms.

1) Spending hours and hours watching DTO & PTO videos over and over again.

2) Prepping canvas panels in rainy days ... takes forever to dry!

3) Traveling all the way into the city to shop for art materials while I could get them close by or get them online.

4) Keep thinking I need to make another trip into the city for a more fancy (i.e. baroque style picture frame) and bigger glass palette.

Though the above are all essentials for preparation of any painting / drawing lessons, I know deep down I'm procrastinating.

Why?  Because I want to skip all those slow learning process and be able to paint well immediately.  But the hard truth is I can't and I don't think anyone can master a skill over night. So let's get back to reality, bite the bullet and dive into the practice.

Thank you for listening to all this nonsense and you all have been so supportive to my venture.  Thank You!

Cheers and have a wonderful weekend! xxoo

(The post is also for Paint Party Friday - hosted by Eva and Kristin.  All are welcomed!  Do join in to share and support each other!)