painting again

It's been a long time. We moved a few months ago, and there was so much to do before I knew it a few months had gone by. During which I painted nothing. Hardly even any sketching. The more time passed without doing art, the harder it felt to get back into it. This week I finally resolved I had to do something. So I pulled out a very old painting, an acrylic I did as a teenager. It's rather pathetic, but it was one of my first ever "subconscious drawings" that I had attempted to paint. I set up both the original drawing and the acrylic "sketch" and set to work to create it anew:




Here's as far as I've gotten. I'm pretty pleased to find that after almost half a year of no work, my eyes and hands haven't quite forgotten how to work together.



This is soft pastels on french paper, 18 x 24". I'm all out of paper, so I've been recycling my worst paintings, rubbing them out and using the other side of the paper. This one was reworked over that deer. I really need to go out and buy some sandpaper soon.