Summer Art Challenge Days 23-29 — making art (of some kind) every day!
The impulse to create is a funny thing. It doesn’t confine itself to neat boundaries of expression. A great many creative people have more than one muse, and sometimes there can be conflicts.
I’ve found myself in a period of doing a lot of music, after an intense two years focusing on visual art and storytelling. My two bands are in the midst of a run of summer gigs, and one of them is preparing to record again; that means extra practices, and extra travelling, and extra time spent performing. Which is why this little one-page comic took me six days to do (on day 24 I made the character sketch for Melody). But a little bit each day got me there!
I’ve always found this a hard balance to keep. I don’t know what I’d do without my muses; between them they keep me sane. But sometimes they drive me crazy, too. I really hope they can work this out.
As the Muse Turns — pen and ink with watercolour on Strathmore smooth bristol. I’m experimenting with this smoother paper, since I have a pad of it lying around; it’s beautiful to draw on but the watercolour handles rather strangely. Not bad if you’re just doing small areas, but the larger ones are hard to get a smooth wash on.
For more Iris the Art Muse comics, click her tab in the menu bar at the top.
Karen Gillmore Art 
I like this comic very much! Regarding not only having one muse – I can understand you pretty well because I liked to write little stories and I love to paint, and there is only so much time you can spend!
Regarding the Strathmore paper: Have you every tried your markers on that paper? And have you ever painted with Gouache?
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Hi Ulla! Sorry to take so long answering — somehow I missed the notification on this one and just found it in my e-mail.
Focus has always been a problem with me — you’ve got it, it all boils down to time! Now that I’m getting older, I’m starting to realize that I’ve got to pick my favourite things and chuck the rest of the things I’ve been dabbling in. It’s very freeing, really.
At the point i wrote this post, I hadn’t tried the markers; but I just did last night, on Tabby Tallulah! It’s lovely paper to work on, and I think it’s going to become my new fave, at least for stuff that is pen-and-ink and marker heavy. I’m still not convinced on the watercolour, but the clean ink lines might tip the balance for me. And the watercolours do come out very vibrant.
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And oops, I forgot to mention gouache! I’ve used it a bit; I use the white quite a lot with regular watercolours because it’s more opaque than China White. But I’ve also used coloured gouache in mixed-media situations; one of these days I’m going to discipline myself to just paint a whole picture with the stuff!
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My bet is on Melody. Red heads are the feistest! 😉
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Being a redhead, I can’t argue with that! Oh wait. am I *supposed* to argue, being feisty? Oh, now I’m confused…
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