As I mentioned before Bee is a character I created over the spring break in April. She is a chubby little woman with root arms and puffy hair who never opens her eyes. I made this little one because I wanted to feel comfortable in my own skin, and she embodies the feeling when you are ok with the way you appear. Bee was a big step for me because before that moment I was focusing most of my energy in acrylic and pencil drawings, Bee is made of watercolor, a very new medium for me to try. I liked manipulating the water to make shapes and layering the pigment to make a gentle being. She is peaceful, soft and always in a meditative state. The best thing about Bee was that she got me out of a rut, at the time I felt like I was going through a form of artist block, painting was feeling boring, and the things I liked doing before like mixing paint and shading things over and over again felt dull. When I started creating Bee I became interested in creating again, and I looked back on my painting habits before wondering why I was so strict with myself. I had questions and notes for myself, about my process, about my rules and about how I was so judgmental of my own artwork, here are the questions and notes (I wrote these down on a Sticky note):
Honesty, only painting large scale super strict paintings after a while gets so boring! Art is meant to be fun, it is meant to embody the emotion of the creator but it is also just a way to let all of your jiggles out. This quarter what worked was having time to paint and painting during school time. When I am at school and in the painting zone there are a lot less things to distract me than if I was at home. I liked making Bee, and the lesson she taught me, art if for fun sometimes. |