initial study of hummungbirds in different media

Lovely!

The preliminary sketches are the best. You really knocked it out of the park on them. I like the line quality. From the charcoal sketch that you are really "seeing" the contours and gesture of the bird. You are finding aesthetic elements from nature, instead of trying to render realistic detail. I would love to see those qualities transfered into the more finished pieces. You're really onto something here, Trine.

I would love to see you sketch like you did in the first one, and then wash color on top with that same sense of freedom.

Excellent, Trine, I too like the lines of your charcoal sketches but love the colors of your flowers at end!

It's really cool to see the process of art. I should really get my materials out and start painting again.

Wow, I am impressed! I liked them all, and thought the birds in motion were really amazing.

Thank you all for your kind and interesting comments. Warren is into somehting here. The end goal must be to show the vitality more than the realistic "still life bird", but even though I want to end up with a simplefied dynamic style I need to have the details and the anatomy in too. So doing the 0/4 brush thing made me focus very intensively on how the wings were divided into different areas of feathers and how the feather patterns differ on different parts of the body and made me understand that I need to understand beaks well etc etc.

As for having the freedom and the bravery to sketch freely and then use washes, there I still have a bit further to walk. I can feel myself loosening up but the urge to be neat and colour within the lines is still lurking.

I love gesture sketches but still lots of the time, I am too tense in that sense to do them.

The very best part though of my journey is that each month I feel that I am getting a small step further with my art. One tiny step at a time I learn and develope.

Nice stuff. I see what Warren is saying, too. I may try that myself.

I hear you, Trine. And please don't be offended or challenged, I see so much talent in you; I am just trying to call upon my 25 years experience to help. You say you want it to be neat and accurate, but those charcoal drawings are the most accurate and spot-on, so trust yourself more when you pick up the paint to do the same thing.

In any event, you are developing wonderfully. I'm way impressed. Overall, what you've got over the rest of us, is that you're cranking out the work and that's the best thing you can do.

I am neither offfended or challenged. Never fear that. I am impressed with how well you can see what one of my biggest challenges is. I do NOT want it to be neat and accurate in general because that is in fact very boring and can be better done with a camera. I am more concerned with getting it RIGHT than accurate. Have you ever seen works by Frans Widerberg? his work which are kind of look just right but are proportionally wrong proportionwise is something I like much much better than photorealistic

It is more that I feel myself fighting values I have been shown by everyone including myself and which had become too much a part of me. I must accept that they are part of me but I want to reduce their grip. What I am talking about is not a WANT to be neat, and tidy and nice and honest and kind and stuff like that, it is a NEED to be less so.

I do believe my journey towards more freedom in my drawing lines or brush strokes is a parallell one with allowing myself more freedom in life. LOL the last one is harder than I thought. Of course these kind of things are great values that I think everyone should have but at this stage in my life I long for INTERESTING, STRIKING, INNOVATIVE, MAD, CRAZY, FUN, JOY, DIFFERENT and words like that in addition.

Being that kind of "nice persons" are also being very boring persons. LOL we are the ones worrying at parties instead of having fun; we worry about people getting sick, we worry about the tv possibly be smashed by a drunk person leaning on it, we worry about the kids in that house waking up and getting scared by all this noisy drunk people. we worry about the nabours who have to get up early for work the next day and who might not have been able to sleep properly, we worry and wish we had stayed home with a book instead. And we have to pretend to have a great time so that people can not see LOL how totally boring we are.

So in my life as in my art I want FREEDOM from the urges to make things neat and accurate. There is hope for me LOL, my homes have always been best discribed as hygienetic but very very untidy - I call it our creative mess growing on every possible surface expotentially.

This became kind of personal but I do believe art is personaly and I want my art to be so too - not only skills.

I take one thing back, I am challenged by comments but in a very nice way to take a step back and try to look at my journey from a distance too which is a very good thing.

If I had been able to attend art college I would have had to accept very harsh critics indeed as part of my developements so being able to handle all kinds of comments is what we should accept too when we put our work out here.

LOL I am a cool teacher though according to rumours the 9th graders have presented at home and which was overheard by a sub teacher at one of her other jobs. LOL at my age I clutch every rumour like that to my heart.

I'm with you. It's funny; I'm kind of on the opposite journey from you. If you look at one of my older pieces (the pollution paintings), it is very expressionistic and chaotic. My newer, overhead paintings, are much more organized and show clearer thought. Right out of school and during the early 90's, I was in a crazy, messy loft downtown without a care in the world, my head often clouded with pot smoke. I remained just disciplined enough to stay our of jail and keep my bills paid.

Now, I am much more focused, clear-thinking. My "altered state" now, is meditation. As a husband and father, I strive for tremendous responsibility and discipline in life, to set an example for my daughter. I'm still a "crazy guy", but in a more focused way. Although, sometimes I do look at the wet, drippy, speeding mark-making in those older paintings and wonder if I should "get messy" again. I do feel like I know what I am doing a lot more, now; I feel much more confident standing in front of the blank canvas. In the "crazy days", a lot of my good paintings were the result of luck or happy accident.

This is very interesting and it very clearly shows how parenting influence us.
My kids have left the nest so I can allow myself to move away from the überreliable person I have been and take out other parts of me, while you have taken on responsibilities and your art as well as your priorities changes with it. The art mirrors the life.

Since I am single as well, now is the time I can be irresponsible for the first time in my life (met my husband to be at 16, engaged at 17, married at 20 and kids at 22 and 23, divorced at 26, single parent+teacher+extra studies+kind of like fosterparent++). LOL If ever I am to take a leave from work and go off into the world with a backpack on now is the time. In a few years time, my age could lead to health issues making it impossible to do things like that easily.

One strange thing I have noticed which you probably have noticed the opposite of, is that now I can allow myself to travel to dangerous places and similar things. I used to think all the time that I had to take care of my own safety and health because they needed me. Now I do it for myself or can allow myself more risks.

I will not do the "play young"-thing because that is fairly ridiculous when grown women do BUT I will definately do the grown up version of them.

warren take a look at this link. you might find it interesting. I just came over it

http://www.thebiscuitfactory.com/profile.php?brandname=Chris%20Jones

Trine, your work shows so much potential. You will do great paintings one day. I ike what I see here, and you have gotten a lot of good advice.

Thank you. I do very much appreciate all the advice I get.

I like the sketches too! Excellent. the lines have good movement and flow. I admire your dedication to your work.

being so quick they are very hard to capture ,you did a beautiful job of it

Wow... very interesting! Thanks for sharing!

I love your work, Trine! My grandmother taught me to love European art, especially still-life paintings and landscapes and portraits of birds. So these sketches bring me back to basic studies of the world's natural effervescence. The drawings exhibit a nice graphic finesse for shadings and dimensionality. The color study calls forth exotic flavors of nature's symphonic grace in splendid array.

Fantastic work- wow I found where you have been stashing you work. It is all wonderful keep on doing what your doing.

Thank you all.

Love the work. Great job, I have been trying to improve too. It's great to see someone else out there challenging themselves.

I think you have the shape down, practice sometimes does help, unless it's something your brain just will not grasp on to, which happens to me from time to time lol

There must be a special gift. I can see it but I can't make it look like that. Nice work.

I am crazy about hummers. I have never even attempted to capture them on paper.
Kudos to you!

Yes, art is indeed personal and it should. I should be so productive and have half the talent, they are marvelous!! I, too, adore hummers, wonderful subject!

i loved this ...both the artwork, and the comments

Sketches show your talent !!!

Helo Trine,
I always love your work and always will. I study Chinese and Japanese brush painting as well as Italian technical painting. I entered art shool to learn to paint like an impressionism but, fell in love with textile design which pretty much consumed most of my time during my 4 years in school. I am a very tidy and organized person but, sometimes i have to get out of the safety zone and experience the danger of messiness. I must admit these moments usually help me to create my favorite abstract pieces. As an artist one has to be opened to all type of critics. I got smashed really bad by some faculty members during my second year in art school. I didn't want to continue with school as i was so hurt. I got up on my feet and produced the biggest body of work for the next semester. Not only i smashed the faculty members during review board...i was awarded another 15 credits equivalent to 1 semester. I keep this and other critics in mind to help me through my journey in the art world. Trine...you are the women i dream to become! I've never been married nor have children, but hope to become a mother sometimes soon. Please, keep on going with your creative self and your words of wisdom. Thank you for been you!!