Painting without a plan, drawing from my camera roll, and falling in love with landscapes
No. 08 | March Newsletter
Dear friends,
While February began to show signs of spring, we’ve had more snow storms over the past few weeks than all of winter, it seems. Needless to say, I’m looking forward to spring!
In my post about my first year as a full-time artist, I mentioned I had taken on part-time graphic design work. Alas, my contract came to an end due to restructuring cuts. It’s bittersweet—I’m grateful for the extra security it brought me, but I’m also happy to have the space to focus more of my energy on client work, my portfolio, and creating content.
I’ve been slowly easing back into client work and I feel so happy I get to illustrate as a job. I honestly can’t imagine doing anything else.
Painting without a plan
Being the perfectionist that I am, I tend to over-plan every aspect of my work in an attempt to control the outcome, which can take the fun out of the process. Lately, I’ve been itching to be more playful and spontaneous with my work.
There were a few pages in my sketchbook I didn’t like that I’d been meaning to paint over, so I busted out my acrylic paints. Acrylics are great for covering up “mistakes”. The process is really forgiving, which allowed me to work intuitively without the pressure of having everything figured out beforehand.
Drawing from my camera roll
While figuring out what to paint on my sketchbook cover-up pages, I would rummage through my camera roll for random reference images. It’s something I like to do when I don’t know what to draw, and often I’ll find images I forgot I had taken.
Drawing from my own images feels more personal than drawing from images I found on the internet. It gives me insights into my personal voice because it was taken from my perspective in the first place.
It makes me feel more connected to what I’m making. I also like that I don’t have to worry if I’m copying the reference too closely or whether the image is copywritten.
Falling in love with landscapes
Speaking of landscapes, in 2020, I decided to tackle my fear of painting environments by participating in the PleinAirpril challenge by Warrior Painters. It’s a yearly challenge where you paint and post a plein-air painting or study every day. I ended up with about 13 paintings in total.
Some of my reference images were from the internet, some were my own, and others were from friends. I learned so much about composing scenes, perspective, and colour—and fell in love with landscapes.
I’d love to get into real plein-air painting outdoors in the elements, but that’s a whole other beast!
Here are some digital painting studies from 2021, where I focused on documenting the colours as I saw them and playing with stylizing shapes.
Environments are now my favourite thing to paint. Lately, I’ve realized I want to explore creating more illustration work with a focus on environments, using atmosphere, weather, and mood to emphasize the narrative.
You can find gallery-quality giclée archival art prints in my INPRNT shop.
If you see anything you’d love to hang on your wall or give as a gift, this is a great way to support me and my work.
Between March 12-19, get 20% off with this coupon code: 0IUVHZUQ
A peek into Eric Carle’s studio and process (via pal Meg Hunt)
Sweet chat between Andy and his wife, Sophie, for the 400th podcast episode of the Creative Pep Talk podcast, talking about building a foundation and finding yourself before building your portfolio
Following along Sophie McPike’s 100-day challenge on Instagram
Hope you’re feeling well and cozy. Thanks for being here!
Talk soon,
Danielle
I love drawing from my camera roll too! 😋 & that episode of creative pep talk was so sweet.
Wow, your paintings are so beautiful! I love that they have your touch and uniqueness. You make me want to try a few days of plain air if the weather allows it. Hope you get spring soon and that you get all the lovely commissions with good clients.