Unstuck

Admittedly, I've been feeling kind of stuck lately in my artwork.  I haven't been creating as much as I'd like.  I tried to prep a  few canvases, but they were not turning out how I wanted.  I was uninspired by the backgrounds I created.  Sometimes I struggle with paint.

Last night, however, I took a risk and reverted back to mixed media/watercolor which has long been a love of mine.  There's some kind of lovely quality of layering waxy colored pencil (prismacolor is my choice) over translucent watercolor or marker, sometimes both.  I'm limited in the colors I can use for colored pencil  since my set is the 24 pack + a medium gray.  Sometimes that's advantageous.  It provides a rule, a construct, a challenge to work with and structure the art.

This lion -> is 5x7".  I intended to have a brighter, more orange background, mixing yellow and red on the page, but I didn't wash my brush out well enough and a tinge of blue made it a perfect golden brown to inspire this lion.  Happy accident.  I think this lion grew out of a couple circumstances.  I had a tantrum last week with that bad news. I roared. It was cathartic.  Moving on.  It could also stem from a conversation I had with a friend about images from C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia.  I like that idea.

8x12" Acrylic & Watercolor

8x10" Acrylic & Watercolor

I was so excited and thankful to create again last night.  I have a couple of exciting things in the works that I had not imagined in the way they came out.  My husband even noted it's a bit of a new style, a new twist.  I created more realistic backgrounds this time.  Seascapes inspired by a brilliant blue water color tube.  I've been playing around with the idea of doing  a starfish, but I didn't imagine creating it like I did below.  I had not intended to create a white pelican, but in my magazine destruction I found a Florida Wildlife magazine and I suppose he came to mind from that.  Neither one is yet complete, but I'm so excited to start working on them.  They too are already mixed-media.  I used water color and salt to create texture for the seascape of the pelican, then outlined my sketch and details in acrylic.  The starfish is also watercolor with an acrylic wash for the details.