Some Ave Art!

Before I was making money at job-things, my holiday and birthday gifts to Victoria would always be art. This year, since we were budgeting all our savings for moving, we didn't really have much money to spend, so I worked on a portrait of Ave on and off between our packing and unpacking times.

So, in celebration of Monsters coming closer and closer to a tangible thing, here's the ever brilliant Avery.

I struggled with this a LOT. Before I'd sat down to paint her, I'd been painting character portraits from our other WIP like bam, bam, bam, two hours resulting in awesomeness, very close to the original vision I started with.

Ave, however, took one full do-over and about 10-12+ hours. Keeping track of time was tough since I had to use little pockets of time here and there, but she was quite the struggle to get just right.

Still, I have to remind myself that, as I paint more and do better, my critiquing eye expects more out of me. So these previous paintings I did, in my brain, are a whole lot better until I let time pass, keep painting new things, then come back to them. Then I can see that I certainly have made progress.

I used to be pretty proud of that black-and-white sketch. The two pictures were painted with similar methods, and Kali on the left was the first time in a looooong time that I had tried painting over a sketch without full line art. Ave on the right is the most recent painting I've completed.

Writing also works the same way sometimes, but also, sometimes, I look back at what I've written and get excited because, "Wow, this is still good????" So, I mean, both things are good things, as long as we keep doing the writing and doing the painting.

For now, Ave's printed out and framed, ready to go up on the wall.