2023 has been a long year, or was it? I finished moving a garden to a new place which basically was an entire summer of work. My art? I thought I was going to delve into pastels, but only did one. I chose a picture I took of Moraine Lake in Banff National Park.
Considering I hadn't used my pastels in over two years I though it came out fine. For my New Year's resolution, which I never make, I've decided to work with new materials and try different techniques and not be so fixed on creating only colored pencil work.
Below are two colored pencil pieces I worked on this year, one inspired by a cloud I saw as I exited our lane and looked down the roadway and another from a photo taken in Italy. I enjoyed the brick, the tiles, the plants and gutters. So much fund to draw.
And since it was a troubling political year, I needed to escape into my art with pieces that allowed me comment on things happening in the world. The first a montage: "My Body My Choice" and then another colored pencil piece, "Will Climate Change Bury our Children"?
Trying to accept the world, as awful as it can be, I tried to lose myself by believing that maybe I needed to search for more of the good in the world. So I began "Still Searching for Nirvana". I don't believe Nirvana is reachable at this point, but I'd like to believe there is reason to search for it.
And then at the end of summer I decided to work on an informal portrait of Wells, one of my grandkids, and then realized if I was going to give it to him at Christmas, I'd better have one for the rest of the kids. So here are the four pieces I did.
I now have four drawings in various beginning stages, but I'll have to put them off for a while because I need to update my website, something that I find painstaking.