Ugh!

Since I'm preparing to publish my new website, I thought this would be a good time to update my poor neglected blog. The semester is wrapping up so it gives me some time to reflect on the semester. For a variety of reasons, this has been a very frustrating semester on an artistic level. It started off pretty good that culminated is this painting:

    This was a small painting that did as a commission for my old friends back In Jackson. I consider this one of my best paintings I have completed so far. Everything kinda went downhill from there.
    One of my goals this semester was to really push myself creatively. Take myself out of my comfort zone so to speak. Despite completing this goal, It really didn't leave me with much work to put in my portfolio. Experimenting with skin tones proved to be rather difficult for me as they became either too muddy or too chalky. Still not quite sure how I'm going to approach it in future paintings but I'm starting to develop a better color sense.
    I also began to do life painting which I had never done up until that point. It took some getting used to but I started to see some results by the end the semester. Here are some of the better ones taken with my crappy cellphone camera:

Despite what I consider many failures this semester, I did learn a lot of what to do and more importantly, what not to do. Because of this, I think I set myself up pretty nicely for my next semester. As soon as break starts, I'll probably do some small color studies to see what happens and hopefully complete my website I previously mentioned. Hopefully this we be the first in series of consistent blog updates....we'll see.