The bad girl is back.

Entitled to my own excuses?

I was gone for 9 weeks, and where the heck did I go? I know you don’t need to hear my plethora of excuses for all the wasted weeks, but I’ll tell them anyway. :P

For the last 9 weeks, 3 weekends were family out-of-town short vacations. The rest were a mix of family responsibilities, some days deliberately spent on commission projects for my other endeavor, the doll fashion shop, and a week or two of being flat-out lazy. Sometimes, I just didn’t have the will power to sit on my table and be creative the way I wanted.

On my way to failing Week 6 (Simple Fabrics), I devised a strategy to work on my assignments during evenings of workdays. To catch up, you know, or draw in advance, especially that I have already set vacations for the coming weekend. I know it would have been also more advantageous for me since my son is having his summer vacation (from school) the entire time, thus my nights after work are free (from tutoring). But my self-discipline, or the lack of it, failed me again.

Sometimes, I doubted the goals I set myself every week. Or the scope, at least, of the weekly assignments. Were they really unattainable (for the working family woman commuting four hours to work daily, with other artistic endeavors) or I am just plain lazy?

Sheesh… it took me weeks to finally decide and have the thick face to log in and write here again. I know I don’t have readers or followers, but, it feels like I was deceiving something or someone if I don’t at least try to finish this 53-week journey of mine. It’s like some baby I bore, but left somewhere else to die. Geez, saying that was making it worst already.

Or if I try to be more positive, which I always am, I can work on my weakness and flaws, don’t you think? You know, catch up?

So, here’s the plan.

Current status:

I already had my male face done on schedule, but never got to upload the drawings. I’ll have them available in another post, as I’m writing from somewhere I somehow couldn’t find a copy of the artwork’s photo. I was already done with my Week 5: Hands and Legs exercise and I have also already sketched my “fabrics” ready for the “Simple Fabrics” and “Luxury Fabrics” weeks but never got to finish them since my tablet broke, which I used to store my fabric/clothing photos.

I really think I’m not yet ready for renderings. So, as much as I wanted to start Shoes, Bags, or Jewelries, I believe my sketching techniques are so flawed I find myself struggling with the many difficulties self-taught illustrators like me encounter. Proportion, perspective, you know, the basics. I draw what I saw, and I think it makes it so difficult if you don’t understand why these subjects look that way.

Then a few weeks ago, I re-discovered legendary Andrew Loomis’ books. I got almost all his beautiful books from this very generous site, http://www.alexhays.com/loomis/. And I realized how much I’ve been missing. All my questions in Figure Drawing, were answered. What I felt after reading the first chapter from his “Figure Drawing for all its worth” is positively strange excitement, and the promise that there's still a chance to better my craft. He probably was a fun art teacher. I will probably make a separate post just to tell you how much gratitude I felt for him for extending his knowledge in his books. So, yeah, that added up to the fact that I need to learn the basics before I start rendering.

And to further complicate my case, I have enrolled in an online art course at Coursera.org, Introduction to Art: Concepts & Techniques. And, another though face-to-face class, Fashion Illustration (which I’ve been meaning to take up for the last two years). Both will use up most of my incoming 7-10 weekends of this year.

So, what am I to do?

I am planning to change the gear. Re-map things. Not because I was unsuccessful with my previous curriculum, but I think it wasn’t outlined right. Instead, since I will be doing lots of art assignments to these classes, and will be doing exercises based on Andrew Loomis’ book that I have mentioned earlier, I thought it would be fair for everyone (me and me) to just post what’s been happening with my illustration endeavors.

Easy Peasy.

So, where do I start?

Anywhere. No plans, for now I guess. I don’t want to disappoint myself so whatever I came up with this weekend, will have to be posted before Monday.

Will this work for my ultimate goal?

Hopefully so. Because really, it’s just all about giving time to it. For now.

So I gotta go.

Whew. That was some speech.

‘Til next time….