Doing My Own Thing: Faces

Until this weekend, to the best of my knowledge, I've never tried to draw a face other then happy faces like this :-) or smiles on stick people. I'm pretty solidly in the 'can't draw' camp and decided that it wasn't a boundary I planned to push.

But then I started feeling really antsy that so much of my mixed media work is incredibly derivative of other artists and crafters. I don't want to be that girl who makes great She Art "Christy Tomlinson style"... I want to be the girl who makes great art, Nicole Maki style.

I adore Christy, Cathy, Alisa, Pam, Dina... and I learn best by mimicking others; but after a time of learning you (or in this case, I) need to take those new skills and apply them to your own work.  Otherwise, what's the point?

Volumes have been written on the difference between art and craft and I think, for me, with crafts we're thrilled if our project comes out looking *exactly* like Donna Downey's, Teesha Moore's or Julie Balzer's (oh my gosh, I wish!!!). But with art, I don't think it's a success until your sources of inspiration are so buried that all the viewer can see in it is you.

And so, it's time to step outside my comfort-zone, push the envelope a bit and apparently throw around a lot of cliches and start making my own art, not someone else's.

I hope that won't drive you all away in droves, but if it does, I'll have to accept that too.

Here are some pages from my sketchbook this weekend. I'm trying to find a starting place en route to my own style, and figuring out the proportions of a face seemed like a good place to begin.

I know, it's pretty damn primitive and my kid can draw better... but I'm trying.

I really wanted to lean on my favorite materials like punchinella and book paper but I thought I should keep it simple and add in the fun stuff that I love as I get my bearings.

And here are some "characters" I was working on. Very rough and crazy looking but I see the faintest hint of a style merging

And I've been at this long enough to know that whatever art I end up calling my own, it'll be brightly colored, a little edgy, with a lot of text, some Mexican folk art and pin-ups.