Breaking Art Block with Crayons

Roses in Crayon on Paper

photo reference by Ronnier at WetCanvas

This month I've been in the artistic doldrums. I spent November writing a novel and a half, got all wound up in Writing Mode and couldn't stop after the month was over. So I was writing sequels to the silly backstory tripe thing I finished Nanowrimo with, essentially fan fiction on some previous novels.

I did one new painting on the 3d with my Winsor & Newton Watercolour Markers, the Trilobites one:

Trilobites in W&N Watercolour Marker

And then nothing till today. This morning the Salvation Army delivered an enormous Christmas box filled with donated presents from my wish list. A gorgeous deep purple velvetish throw blanket, a huge warm deep purple bath towel, a black hoodie, a couple of books - and a letter size acid free sketchbook with medium weight drawing paper plus a Kids' Art Set:

100 piece Kids Art Set

These are anything but artist grade light fast mediums. Crayons, colored pencils, little short markers, cheap oil pastels... but something about it broke the block to smithereens. 

They didn't have these kits when I was a kid. There were watercolor sets and most of those pretty small with 8 colors and a horrible blunt brush (those haven't changed, the horrible blunt brush in this kit will be ignored in favor of a waterbrush for convenience), and boxes of crayons, little packs of colored pencils. That was about it. Not these saturated spectrum colors either. Let alone laid out intense against black to make you want to paint with them.

The ranges are a bit different. Hot Pink never made it into the lineup unless you got the big box of crayons when I was a kid, or the huge watercolor set. Magenta didn't either. Mixing purple was hard back then when your red was always a red-orange and blue was green cast. You'd get gray with "red and blue make purple."

But seeing that, thinking of the people who put together that great gift, I just cut loose and relaxed. I sketched the roses and took the complementary colors challenge of doing them just in red and green. Bang, down went the block. I can now relax and get back to daily painting. That's a lot of sketch pages. I've used about one and a half now. On teh following page is something that's my own holiday present for my readers everywhere:

Ari Cat Coloring Page

pen on paper

The cartoon coloring pad had hippo, elephant, dog, horse, snake... circus animals and pets. But no cat. Not even a lion or tiger for the circus. So I had to try the little short marker pen and fill the gap. Enjoy the Ari Cat Coloring Page. His real points are black mask, brown-beige body, smoke-brown paws and tail. But you can color him any colors you like, why not a purple and yellow Siamese with orange eyes? Or a brown eyed blue-point Siamese? Have fun!

And yes, for the record, I usually do open presents on Solstice Eve. Tomorrow is the Solstice, tonight or tomorrow night is The Longest Night of 2014... after this days will start creeping longer, the quiet soggy march toward spring begin and San Francisco is thirstily drinking up a lot of good rain after a parched summer. It's rained day after day here and we sure needed that.

Purring at you! Hope to post more soon!