10.19.25

Studio Vibes

Watching: Alice in Borderland, Dungeon Meshi, and season 8 of Grey’s Anatomy

Reading: Rebecca by Daphne de Maurier, and considering my biannual reread of Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

Listening: Blue Valentine by NMIXX and A Matter of Time by Laufey

My brother and I hung out this weekend, and as I was finishing up my Renaissance fair dress, I asked for his opinion on notions. Originally, I wanted a very celestial-inspired dress, and I got patches, stencils, and paints to do it. However, as I worked on the dress, I found these notions incredibly overwhelming. My brother agreed and reminded me to “Kill my darlings.” These past two weeks were definitely about killing my creative darlings and not being afraid to start over.

In Progress

I’m not going to lie, I didn’t work on my artworks as much as I should have. However, after posting my last blog post, I ended up scrapping a color study. I liked the idea in theory, but as I sat with it, I didn’t love the color scheme. I painted a new study and ended up going with a similar color scheme to the other paintings I’ve been working on. Despite the bright colors, the ominous feeling is just as pertinent. It also follows the idea of what I’ve been wanting to explore with these works - bright, artificial, saccharine colors. I’m not looking for realistic color schemes.

The old study, focusing on more of a night scene.

The second variation with the new color scheme.

Also, the self-portrait I was working on to collage onto a larger painting is getting cut. I still want to incorporate self-portraits into the work, but I need to rethink the approach. After working on the new study, I decided to go in a slightly different direction on how I build out the underlayers of these paintings. I’m sketching them out in bright colors, so it can peek through. As I’ve mentioned before, I really want to push and pull the layers, and that means the actual imagery as well. I’ve been using a hot pink as the underpainting color, which creates a vibration that comes through the top parts of the painting. I know a better direction of where these paintings are going, and I plan on working on them this upcoming week as much as I can.

Rather than a blank background, I’ve added a hot pink underpainting. I’ll also be adding similar underpaintings on the side mirrors.

Creative Endeavors

My main focus this past week was on completing my Renaissance dress, and I succeeded! Each sewing project I work on, I learn new techniques while perfecting old ones. These are the new things I learned:

  • Working with cotton twill

  • Working with linings

  • Working with crepe back satin

  • Working with trim

  • Adding eyelets

The pattern had a lot more notions that were added to the piece, but I ended up only using the large trim. All the other notions I had didn’t fit as well as I had hoped, plus the simplicity of the overdress felt more magical than adding more decorations.

My final outfit for this year’s Maryland Renaissance Festival.

I’ll be taking a small break from sewing to switch focus back onto my painting. However, since I’m going out of the country for a week, I can’t work on my large-scale works. What I’m going to do instead is bring one of the many sketchbooks I have with me and do some plein air painting. I’ve also been seeing people draw/paint on the back of postcards, and I would love to do something similar. I plan on stopping by vintage shops, so hopefully I can find some vintage postcards.

Other Shenanigans

My brother needed me to watch his dog, so for the past week, I was babysitting a 3-year-old, reactive border collie named Aly. I always thought I wanted a border collie after growing up with one, but now I realize I do not have the energy needed for one. Aly is a sweetheart and a gremlin wrapped into one dog. Also, not only did I go past my step goal every day this week by walking her, but I also had a total of 7 hours of working out. You’ll never hear me repeat this, but I’m so tired of walking.

A major struggle I have when it comes to sewing is pointing out all the flaws in the piece, instead of celebrating what I accomplished. With this dress, I can point out multiple things that I did wrong. However, what I should be doing is celebrating that I made an overdress in a week (not including the mockup). I had enough fabric leftover to remake some of the pieces. I didn’t even break my needle, which is amazing considering how thick some of those layers got! So, here’s to me celebrating my accomplishment and knowing I can take my learnings for future projects.

Staring me down while I was working.

A T-rex’s natural predator.

This is all I have for this sprint! The next post will explore what I learned in Ireland and *hopefully* much more progress on actual paintings.