Friday, January 29, 2016

Angel on the head of a pin, number three

I struggled a lot with this one, and I am not very happy with it, but for right now its the best I can do without completely starting over (again), and there's no time for that.  I once heard artistic professionalism described as "Doing the best you can in the time that you have."  I've done that, but at the expense of my usual practice of sketching other stuff as a daily-ish exercise.  I wonder if my neglect of sketching tightened me up somehow and made it harder for me to get right what I wanted to get right on this piece. I might tackle this one again though, one of these days. (I think flamingo-colored wings would be great, a lighter green dress. more movement in the dress, the pose showing better through the dress and an adjusted pose. And a big, gleeful smile.)


When I started, I thought that Illustration Friday hadn't come up with a new prompt for the week, because it came so late in the morning, so I started a new angel spinning on a pin. (Last week's prompt was "spin".) When they put up the new prompt, "orbit," I decided that was close enough, and stuck with my idea. Of course, this week Illustration Friday has their new prompt up nice and early, so I missed the boat on getting this picture there. Oh well. It seems everything has been conspiring against me to get this done and posted on time.

I was inspired by these pictures. I love the look of dark, African skin next to leafy green. This one I found on Pinterest. It's supposedly from distractify.com, who surely got it from somewhere else, but I can't find it there, nor can I get my computer to make a link.


The next is by Ruud van Empel and can be found in a article about his work at Huffington Post Arts and Culture.


4 comments:

  1. I think she's adorable, and I like the colors. I can see how you were inspired by the other images. Sometimes we're too hard on ourselves. Maybe if you walk away from this for a bit you'll appreciate her more?

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    1. You're right. We often are too hard on ourselves and maybe I'll like it better later. Thank's for the good word.

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  2. I love your angel of color. And the green of the wings and exotic colored wings are outstanding. I want the dress to wear:-). She has a dreamy, soulful quality about her. Your evaluation of some technicalities of drawing do not outweigh the beautiful feeling conveyed. I can't wait to see number four.

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    1. I'm so glad you like her, Aunt Deanna. I think its going to be a little while before I do another one, because of some other things I'm working on, but I'm sure there will be another one! I'm thinking about an almost front on view of a classic pirouette, maybe with wings extended above the head a bit. Thanks for the encouragement:)

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