Day 6: Ingenue

I've been digging through a lot of my old art from when I first started art school.  Although it's painful to look at, because I had no clue what I was doing, I am inspired by the fresh ideas and creativity that I had as a budding young artist.  I would try so hard to turn these huge detailed drawings into paintings,  I wanted to be a painter so bad.  But nobody teaches you how to paint in school, you get the basics then you're thrown to the wolves.  So I tried it, failed miserably, and then hid the results from myself and everyone.  I messed up plenty of great drawings trying to paint them.  It got to the point where I would have to redo every drawing that I did.  I finally got a technique down, but I never revisited some of those beginning drawings that I am revisiting now.

So during this 100 days of art challenge I am going to revive some of my old pieces and try to make them into the masterpieces that I'd hope they'd be back then.

One piece in particular was this self portrait that I drew in drawing class.  It was inspired by a magazine spread dedicated to Frida Kahlo.  I am really inspired by fashion photography.  In this particular issue, the models were dressed and posed as Frida during her hay days .  There was one picture that I fell in love with where a very young Frida was standing at an easel, smoking a cigarette, and painting.  Her outfit and jewelry looked like she was going out on the town as always, but she was in her zone.  I love Frida.  I love everything about her, but most of all her spirit.  This woman was so feminine and fly even when she was in the middle of creating.  I saw that picture and I wanted to be like her, so I drew myself in the same pose without the cigarette.  I wish I would have kept the cigarette, because it was so gangsta.  She was just holding it in her mouth, painting away, looking all sexy and artsy!  But I took it out because it was hard enough to draw me to look like me, much less me smoking a cigarette, lol!  Needless to say, the hardest thing for me about drawing people is making them look like themselves.  I always draw them to look like distant cousins unintentionally.  So this was the me that I wanted to be when I first started art school.

As you can see, my watercolor painting skills sucked back then!  And she looks like my distant cousin of course, but I still love this drawing.  So much that I redid it and I hope to make it a really great painting now that I have better painting skills.  Not much has changed about me since then.  I still want to be fly, still want to be a painter, and still want to be both simultaneously some how.  I look so young and innocent.  Untainted by reality.  Fresh and hopeful!  LOL!  So I had to name the piece, Ingenue.

As you can see, I changed the eyes.  In the first picture she was looking down because my eye drawing skills weren't that great!  Ha ha!  So, I've graduated and now I'm looking at the viewer with "knowing" eyes.  Like, "I know something you don't know!"  Hee hee.

I still don't look like myself.  I'm going to do a updated version of the same pose, sort of like a then and now series.  I'm going to work more on this one this week, and maybe get up to nerve to paint it!  Yes, I still hesitate when deciding to paint a drawing because I don't want to mess it up!  Having flash backs still to this day!  Hoping I can do Frida, the queen of self portraits, some justice.  I may just screw it up again, but it'll just get better every time I try at least.  Maybe next time I'll add an eye squint and the cigarette!  That would be so hot!