Four things, all occurring in close succession to one another, has made me realize just how doomed this project is in its current state.

One is the horrendous color palette I selected, which somehow reminds me both of Thanksgiving and Halloween at the same time (in other words, not very cohesive and definitely not my intention). Another is a general lack of water color ability, which was excusable and less noticeable in my previous project (but has now rendered this project flat and ugly). Third is my utter fear for taking any risks; I would love to emulate Richard Prince's nurse paintings, because hey, if I hate it already, why not take a risk? But there's something holding me back, maybe a fear of making it uglier or something. Hopefully I'll get over this mental block by November 7. Lastly is a lack of motivation to continue. I'm not excited to work on this project, and can only do so in thirty minute chunks before getting bored or frustrated. I just want to move on. This project is draining all my artistic zest and replacing it with a tired defeat.

I was able to accomplish exactly 2 things this week. One is finally finishing the letters, and amazing! It's uglier than it was before. I hate looking at it, but it's too late. Second is finally deciding an eye color, partly because I have to, and partly to stop looking at a creepy eyeless woman, and it's...okay. I feel extremely ambivalent about it.

I want to throw this project in the garbage.

I remember drawing with Tommy as a freshman, possibly? Or maybe I was a sophomore. But anyways, the only thing I really remember from those lessons was feeling utterly frustrated. I just couldn't get it. I was too rigid and was drawing contour lines first, filling in second. I couldn't conceptually grasp the other way around, or maybe I was too stuck in my ways to truly try it Tommy's way.

This time was different. Although you can still see my previous problems of focusing too much on the contour, I think I'm getting the hang of figure drawing. I was courageous enough to try out different techniques. In the first pic, you can see how I tried extremely light guiding lines and then using defined contour, while in the second I tried using both defined guiding and contour lines. The third I tried filling in the mass with conte crayon on its side, and then going back with contour. I'm excited to work with Tommy again.

I am having a crisis. Work has been slow for my home project because I can't deal with how much I don't like it. My initial excitement has completely died, and I can't bring myself to work on it for long periods of time. I've spent a lot of class and home time on it, but I can't seem to work as quick as I usually do or very effectively. The watercolor, which I thought I was getting a better grip of, is splattering and the execution of this project, despite my careful deliberation before each stroke, may be worse than my first in class project.

I'll talk to somebody on Monday, but for now this home project might as well be on a temporary hiatus. I also don't like the color pallette I chose for the letters, it reminds me of a country's flag for some reason.

I didn't get to do a lot of actual art-ing this week. I did decide, after much deliberation, what color I want my background to be, and decided that I wanted to have flowers in the background. Possible a Kehinde Wiley type of background where it encapsulates the girl in the foreground.

I DID plan, a LOT. I have a really good idea for my next project. After setting my goal to have my next project to be content based, rather than "oh this would look cool" based. It's going to be my first project that's going to be deeply personal and very specific. It's exciting.