Chiens de faïence

It’s the year of the dog so I thought they would make a great subject for my art class yesterday. We used India ink which is hard to control and we were using ordinary paper so the ink would pool where the paper buckled. Most of my students did not show up and I was low energy but we made it work. Every day is not necessarily as smooth as the previous and these trying moments where you are solving problems may just be the truest moments of growth. While working wet on wet there is a moment where the ink is drying and if it is pooling in some creaces in the paper, you can work it back to where it needs to be as best you can. For this we were drawing from reference images. The same one for 8, 6 and 4 minutes in order to work on muscle memory and learn to streamline the technique.

This one is my own and I was doing a lot of ‘herding’ the ink away from the trenches created because my paper couldn’t take the punishment. Notice how when the shape is right the lights and dark can be very organic and lend itself to the loss of control of wet on wet techniques. Usually you would be adding more darks as it dries since the whole drawing lightens quite a bit once it dries.

Cicely has experience with watercolor and was thrilled to do this. Quite frankly I am amazed at the variety of tones she incorporated. Her work also has a lot of movement.

Pat was having a hard time. The one to the left was an exercise I made her do because she often work with little strokes which can be a bit of a crutch. I wanted her to convey the silhouette of a poodle with longer lines showing more confidence than before. The second one is of her own dog. I Helped make this one darker as I can be very hands on like that sometimes. New layers of India ink don't lift old ones like in watercolor so I could see her bring the lighter parts a bit darker still.

I think it’s normal to be feeling low by the end of winter. Hang in there guys, my heart is with you. You’re awesome and I want you to know that if you set achievable goals for yourself, there is no reason why your life can’t be filled with success at every turn.