While I await the delivery of my fabulous new art books, I have been doing a bit of introspection.  Ok, that’s not true. I’m always doing some sort of introspection. Anyone who has read this blog in any type of way could tell you that.  I’m an self-flagellating introspective girl, always have been.  Anyway, in recent days, I have been trying to put my finger on what my problem is lately. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that I have been producing jackshit.  I could sugarcoat it with postulations about how I am trying to get my current series just right, but the fact is…

Jack meet shit.

Part of me wants to blame my Dad’s death on the whole thing. But that would be the easy route.  A cop out almost.  And really, I think it started before that.  Since before I even finished the Colin piece, my productivity has been tanking.  I mean, it took almost four months to finish that drawing.  That’s slow even for me.  Another clue about my meager productivity is this blog. If you look back through the archives (don’t, its boring), there is more text than update images lately.   That’s pretty telling because frankly, I don’t think people give a rat’s ass about anything I might say. I just don’t.  And looking at an image is easy and faster, especially in this instant gratification era.

I’d like to be able to blame the messiness of my studio. But I haven’t really used my studio (as a studio) since we moved in November.  So that would be yet another cop out.

The only thing that I think could be a viable and realistic explanation is burn out (and I know I have considered that before). But not a complete burn out.   I am still very eager to create and do art. I just don’t know if I am particularly happy doing the type of art that I am currently doing.  The portraits. Don’t get me wrong. My portrait work is very rewarding (when I am doing it) and to this day, I always learn something new. I think I improve with each drawing. I have the self-portrait project that I am pretty passionate about, but when I go to actually work on it, I just feel so blaise about it.  But, I dunno, sometimes I just wanna step outside the box a bit.

I attempted to earlier this year with the cartoon inspired pinup girls. They were fun to do (W wants another one), but really, not a great challenge.  I want to create something beautiful and right now, I just don’t feel like I am doing that.  It’s really, really very frustrating.

Ultimately, I might take a break from the portraits for a while – a month, maybe – and work on something else until I can figure out what my problem is.  I might drop working in graphite altogether for a while. Maybe take up the brush again. I haven’t painted something in years.  Maybe my portrait project can morph into a painting project. I have a bunch of small canvases. Hurm.  But we’ll see.  Further introspection is obviously needed.

In the meantime, I’ve started working on a couple things for my bedroom – it could use some art. My bedroom has an Asian theme so I’m working on some faux-ukiyo-e type drawings of Geisha in the style of Utamaro.  I played around in my sketchbook last night and it was kinda fun.  Not sure how it will translate to a finished piece, but the journey has been interesting so far. I will try and post some sketch pages tonight if I remember.

I think I need to remember that its about the journey and how you get there, not what the end result is.  I forget that sometimes.

In other news, I am totally in love with the photos that I have seen from Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland. I can not wait for its release.  Burton. Now there’s an artist who creates beautiful things.  I really truly love everything the man does.  Beautiful.