{"id":1025,"date":"2020-07-18T20:17:28","date_gmt":"2020-07-19T00:17:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.metasilk.com\/wd\/july-art-practice-zoolyartchallenge-1-bat-eared-fox\/"},"modified":"2024-03-23T20:14:33","modified_gmt":"2024-03-24T00:14:33","slug":"july-art-practice-zoolyartchallenge-1-bat-eared-fox","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.metasilk.com\/wd\/july-art-practice-zoolyartchallenge-1-bat-eared-fox\/","title":{"rendered":"July art practice \/\/ #ZoolyArtChallenge (1. Bat-eared Fox)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Even when I’m happy with my skills-so-far I always want more practice. The nice thing about this month’s art challenge<\/a> is it’s all animals<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I decided to kind-of imitate another artist’s take from last year or the year before. I can’t find the link! Or her name! Argh! Karen something maybe? Kathy something? She did ink animals with a watercolor wash behind them. (I’ll comment it here and elsewhere if I can track this down or if one of you knows.) My plan was “stick with pencil, and I might have sketchy bits behind them in the wash.”  <\/p>\n

I’ve drawn about half of the prompts so far  (you’ll see! Stay tuned!), and did not, in fact, stick entirely with my art plan. I am sure you are as surprised as I am.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, I’m getting into this challenge as “this is PRACTICE and I can try WHATEVER when I’m doing it and mess-ups are good!” <\/em>This is really great! So some so far have turned out as I hoped, others totally not, and some surprised me in different ways and I am enjoying looking up animals and putting down shading and learning things.<\/p>\n

Not to get long-winded or anything (because I would never<\/em> do that<\/em>), here’s what I’ve learned or re-learned so far:<\/p>\n

* I like drawing animals<\/p>\n

* Goats are harder than foxes<\/p>\n

* iPhone photography and me are still not a successful combination (my space is too messy right now to get out the scanner effectively, so that’s another project for the rest of July)<\/p>\n

* good watercolor paper is So Much Better but I might as well keep practicing on the not-so-good-stuff but a treat is In My Future (I can see the Arches coldpress from here!) <\/p>\n

* I enjoy using silly capitalization<\/p>\n

* it is really good to take a day off from trying to do all the jobs and all the chores, even if the weather is beautiful<\/p>\n

* I am not sure of the color combos working for anyone but me because my eyes and glasses are so funky but hey<\/p>\n

* I like drawing while having video chats with far-away (and not so faraway) friends and should do that more too. <\/p>\n

I hope you enjoy this process too. I’ll post my favorites so far here first, probably. Since there could be as many as 31 (but probably not), I may wind up posting some over to Instagram<\/a> instead. (I don’t feel that’s as inbox-cluttery, more like a “go-swimming-in-pictures-when-you-want” rather then “they’ve-invited-me-in-be-courteous!”)<\/p>\n

Thank you everyone for making me feel encouraged and adventurous. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Paint, graphite, practice and a Really Cute Fox.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1717,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[20,576,167,24,397,252,43],"class_list":["post-1025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art","tag-critters","tag-fox","tag-painting","tag-pencil","tag-practice","tag-sketchbook","tag-watercolor"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.metasilk.com\/wpages\/wp-content\/uploads\/img_9105-1.jpg?fit=2000%2C1763&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pakBUO-gx","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1683,"url":"https:\/\/www.metasilk.com\/wd\/sketchbook-chicken-practice\/","url_meta":{"origin":1025,"position":0},"title":"Sketchbook \/\/ chicken practice","author":"Kir","date":"7 March 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"For work\/professional development, I got video access to the Wild Wonders 2023 nature journaling conference. 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