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Morning Shoreline

lake shore

“right now” staying focused on the present, mindful and in the moment, an image from the week, with no words or a few words, that acknowledges the “right now.” Inspired by Ann.

European Stream

pen and ink stream

©2012 Carolyn A Pappas, European Stream. Ink, 8 x 5 inches.


I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my personality and how I am nothing like the stereotypical “artist personality.” I took a Myers-Briggs test and I came back as ISTJ (introvert, sensing, thinking, judging). I am very serious and organized. I am ultra-dependable. I see things in black and white and I have a need to follow the rules (sometimes too rigidly!). I love my personality, but sometimes I can get too intense and that’s why I love art so much, because it lets me “depressurize” myself.

The drawing is based on an old photo of a stream taken while crossing over a bridge. I believe it was in Northern Italy. I drew it the other night after Cate had gone to sleep. She has been going to bed around seven o’clock every night so I have some extra time in the evenings these days.

Updates

bookhou triangle bag
When I was pregnant, I threw out most of my clothes because they were really old (read: frumpy) and I wanted to update everything. So I’ve been slowly undertaking the task of buying new things. It’s nice to redo everything from scratch, I must say. I’ve been more intentional about what I am buying to create the specific “look” that I want. This little sketch is of a bag that I got from bookhou at home. It makes a nice diaper bag for Cate’s things.

Recently, I made some updates to my website. I added a static homepage with a painting and a concise artist statement. I wanted to give my site a more professional overall feel and I noticed some people were confused when they landed straight onto my blog. I’m planning on changing out the picture every so often with a current one. I also reorganized my portfolio page according to medium instead of subject matter. Updating my portfolio with new work is going to be a major focus of mine over the next few months.

Leap Day Snow

“right now” staying focused on the present, mindful and in the moment, an image from the week, with no words or a few words, that acknowledges the “right now.” Inspired by Ann.

Happy Leap Day

german shepherd

©2012 Carolyn A Pappas, Sketches of Katie. Ink in sketchbook.

I have always liked leap day, as it is a rare day. Plus, it’s supposed to snow today. Yay!

I thought I would share some links I have come across recently:

Vivien Blackburn has been experimenting with Derwent Coloursoft colored pencils over watercolor, with very nice results. It makes me want to do more experimenting myself, along these lines.

Lisa Call wrote a nice blog Advice to Emerging Artists: You are not a Fraud about writing an artist statement, or writing about your artwork in general. I appreciated the encouraging words.

I’m not partaking in Pinterest.

©2010 Carolyn A Pappas, San Miguel de Allende. Watercolor in 5.5 x 8 inch sketchbook.

I had a Pinterest account, and pinned things to it here and there, but I was never a heavy user. I recently decided to delete my account altogether though, as well as add the no pin meta tag to my site and disable pinning on flickr. I have been seeing countless articles online about how bad their TOS is regarding copyright issues and I was disheartened when I read it for myself. I am a great respecter of copyright and don’t want to associate myself with any service that facilitates theft. Although it is an interesting concept for a social media site, I’m not willing to spend time requesting permission from other people to pin their content. While some people are okay with linking to the original source and giving credit, logically this is not enough for me. For now, if I have interesting things to show you, I will just link to them the old fashioned way.

The above image was a practice sketch I made for the October 2010 Virtual Paintout. I never posted it anywhere though, until now.

Lesson Learned

little girl portrait

©2012 Carolyn A Pappas, Sierra. Watercolor, 10 x 8 inches.

Awhile ago (longer than I care to admit), a relative asked me to paint a portrait of her granddaughter in watercolor. At the time, I was hesitant because I had never painted a portrait in watercolor before, but I said yes because I didn’t want to disappoint and I didn’t want to acknowledge that there was something beyond me.

I started making sketches and ran into trouble immediately. Then I shelved the project thinking I needed more practice on various aspects (drawing children, mixing skin tones in watercolor, etc.). But I never ended up feeling confident enough to start.

It became awkward to see this relative at family functions. “How was the portrait coming along?” she would ask. I felt guilty because I knew I hadn’t started on it.

It was only recently that I decided that I needed to do the painting, no matter how bad it came out. I don’t want to be a person that makes empty promises. So I made the painting over the course of a few days, to the best of my ability. I know there are a multitude of issues, but in all honesty, this probably isn’t bad for a first attempt. I would love to repaint this same subject once I take a few watercolor classes and get some expert instruction. But for now, at least I did what I said I would do!

I am vowing never to let this happen again. It’s better to be honest or say no than to put myself in a situation where I feel overwhelmed and less than authentic.

Orchard

apple orchard“right now” staying focused on the present, mindful and in the moment, an image from the week, with no words or a few words, that acknowledges the “right now.” Inspired by Ann.

Elba Mountainside

Elba seascape

©2012 Carolyn A Pappas, Elba Mountainside. Watercolor and colored pencil, 4 x 6 inches.

Another small painting from Google Street View in Elba, this time experimenting with my new Derwent Coloursoft colored pencils. I like the soft feel of these pencils and they come in a lot of natural looking colors, but I have trouble distinguishing different colors from one another.

I tend to draw with a ton of different colors strewn all over the table, but that won’t work with these pencils. The color swatches at the end of the pencil don’t seem very accurate, and the leads don’t look like the actual color on the paper. Being organized and having a scrap paper on hand for tests is critical for me, because I had a few accidents when I started using the wrong color.

My only other (small) gripe is that the pencils are too large to fit in my electric sharpener. Luckily, I have a manual one that works. Otherwise, I LOVE these pencils.

March will be an exciting month.

watercolor landscape

©2011 Carolyn A. Pappas, Ogunquit Horizon. Watercolor, 10 x 13.5 cm.

Things I’m excited about:

  • The Flower and Patio Show is coming up (March 2-4)
  • I signed up for a two part Botanical Illustration class at the Mass Audubon society. It’s really inexpensive and I’m looking forward to getting out of the house by myself for a bit.
  • I got started on a particular painting that I have been putting off for over a year now. When I’m done with it I will be able to move onto other things with a clear head!

I painted the above image on a watercolor greeting card. It was a scene from my trip to Maine in 2010.