IMC: Day 6 (Thursday)

So, woke up that morning, not feeling great at all. It's been about 6 days and I've been working on around 2 - 4 hours of sleep each night. I remember laying in my bed thinking: That's it. I'll never be an artist. The most that I'll ever be is a dabbler. A dilettante playing at being an artist. Everbody's work is coming along so well and mine looks like a childs. I don't even know why I'm at IMC.

After a while of indulging in that emotion, I let it out of me and then started thinking: People like my paintings. People spend their money on my paintings. Just because I'm not near as good as most of the people here, does not mean that I'm not a good artist. Why am I an artist? Is it due to the money that I could make. Is it the recognition? Is it just a thing to pass the time away? Nope. I'm an artist because I have the need to create. I like creating things and expressing my thoughts visually. I like the way that my paintings look. They may not be professional level, but that doesn't mean that I won't get to that level.

So, with some new hope (and some rest... I got 4 hours of sleep that night), I had breakfast and headed into the studio. I saw my painting and said... "Wow! That's awful!" However, I LIKED the coat that I did the night before. Okay, so there's hope. I got down to work.

As I'm working on the egg and the dragon, I was using too small of a brush. It was starting to look "dotty" again. So, Scott came over and showed me what I was doing wrong. In his style, similar to Greg's, the smaller brush strokes are close to the center of focus and the larger brush strokes are farther away. So, I fixed the egg. Greg came over, made a couple of comments and indicated that it was working out well. The only thing that I really needed to fix was to make my dragon even lighter (to push him farther back into the background... which would make him even larger and scarier).

So, it was a long day of working, but the painting was coming along. By 1:30 a.m., I was tired and have given it my all. However, I was happy with the progress that I made. So, it was time to get 4 - 5 hours of sleep. There was no way that I was going to finish it by Friday morning, so, I got it close to a finishing stage.