The habit of drawing and painting
June 2024 Painting letter
Hi there, how are you?
I’ve been thinking about the habit of painting and drawing. I usually think about it often as a painter because the practice evolves. Material and space are very related to the practice itself. The space that takes to create something, the physical and the mental space. The materials that are available. The everyday life.
By this moment I navigate towards minimalist setups, because it clears up my space both mental and physical. I take my place and use it.
I manage to have the materials right to be used (as much as I can because this thing of cleaning my brushes is something I do not enjoy at all) For making this task less annoying, I use a cleaner from Green for Oil of Sennelier, so at the end of each painting session all my brushes are clean. I sometimes clean them with soap and water. Because I do not use any turpentine, this is a nice alternative for cleaning my brushes, while I paint and when I finish. I can reuse this product several times, so even if this is not as affordable as white spirit, is worth for not being that toxic.
Last week I took a sketchbook and fill it with quick drawings. The idea was to drawing quick, not thinking that much about the result but more about building the everyday habit. Every drawing took very little to be completed. Two tools easy to grab and use. Just open the sketchbook and draw.
I ended up filling in three days. And it was a very nice, yet tight, experience. Because it was very easy to give up because of ugly lines.
It was very nice to just not care that much about perfectly rendered drawings but to focus more on the taking notes side of the sketchbooking drawing practice. Just draw because of the joy of drawing anything. This practice let freedom come. I specially loved some of the drawings, but I do love the most that I just drew, no matter how the line was.
I ended up liking the line and the mass, and how they combine each other. I do love also how some quick lines can express a scene and a gesture. The composition as well. How practice can be physically related to a space and at a time.
I just upload a sketchbook tour video of this sketchbook full of quick drawings on my youtube channel. Be free to subscribe if you enjoy my work. I would love to know if you also do quick sketches/drawings and if this is a practice that you enjoy :) Let me know!
Workshops
After some summer painting workshops to come, I will be hosting monthly painting workshops starting in September again. In the meanwhile if you want to learn with me online, you can do it though my Patreon page. The price is 50€/month. We work together once a month, grab our coffees and meet for 2 hours to do painting exercises, answer your questions, have a feedback of your personal work, sharing reference pictures to work with and talk about painting and books we read, things we love. We can work in english, french, italian and/or in spanish.
Commissions
I currently open for commissioned paintings. I work in acrylics and in oil painting. Please, visit my online shop to know more about it. If you don’t find what you are looking for your project, please let me know.
I hope you have a nice day,
See you soon.
Elena.