Unseasoned Latina

It’s been a while since I last posted anything, none of the paintings I already had and the new ones I tried to make looked right to me. The problem of course wasn’t my paintings, it was me, but I suppose that’s not the point. Regardless of that, I’m slowly starting to feel better so here’s a new painting. I made this last night at like 3 am. I’m trying to use watercolours more because I clearly, desperately need the practice. I might try to remake this piece later with a different medium, since this is honestly a disservice to the poor reference photo.

So, after almost 6 months of having taken the picture I’m finally painting it. I have some more pictures from that same day I want to do as well. I think I’ll make it a series of sorts and then put them all together as a singular project. I actually have made a few series of paintings but they were all accidentally thrown away a few years ago, I’m still heartbroken about it. Anyways, I’ll experiment a little more with different mediums and styles and make the other ones with more of a plan because this piece doesn’t really transmit what I wanted, I was thinking of doing an erotic series of paintings that consisted only of someone’s face and hands, I think it’s a fun idea. However, this painting doesn’t really feel very erotic to me, it just looks like me in a strange pose. It’s a bit weird to make these paintings with my face but I’m in quarantine I can’t really get a model so I’ll just have to work with what’s available.

Normally when I paint a landscape I do a pencil sketch first and paint on top, for this one I just went straight in without a sketch and without a reference picture. I ended up using so much paint it’s ridiculous. I already knew that I didn’t know how to paint trees, but this is way worse than I imagined. However, I’m not really frustrated about it, I actually find it funny. Still, I don’t know if I’m ever going to try doing a landscape like this again, it’s hard. Anyways, I got to practice using my pallete knife since this painting is way bigger than what I normally do, so that’s nice.

I’d like to say I’m finally posting something new I’ve done and talk about how happy I am I’m back to painting. And technically, I am posting something new, the clouds I made today and the landscape at the top I made yesterday. However, I’m only posting this page after crying for about an hour about how awful my painting skills have gotten, how I’m mentally somewhere else, how my hands just don’t fucking work and how I’ve become such a disappointment. I was so happy to try to paint again, I tried yesterday and it didn’t work out, I felt like shit but I let it go, decided to try again today only for this utter disgrace to come out of it. On the bright side my hand looks cool I missed seeing it like that. It’s all strangely bittersweet and I don’t even know what to feel anymore besides exhaustion. (Btw none of the landscapes are actually finished but I’m probably never finishing them)

(Oil paint, white acrylic paint for priming and the lovely effects of my crippling anxiety, depression and chronic pain)

This is actually from a different sketchbook but I’ll include it anyways. I found a sketch I’d made a few years ago that was based off of a Tom Wesselman painting which I’d never actually got to colour, so I decided to colour it and I noticed the body is drawn really badly... However I’m the kind of person that believes that fun colours can save even the worst of drawings so there it is. I actually think the badly drawn body works? I’ll call all the problems a stylistic choice for this one because I actually like it surprisingly enough.

I actually hate these apple sketches... I made them on a really off day where nothing went right and to me the frustration and sadness is really visible here. I hated making these apples and it’s really disappointing to me that even after all I’ve studied and practiced that’s all I can do with how my body and mind is currently due to my illness. However, amongst all this negativity, is a picture I took when making these apples that I actually do like. I’m not a great photographer, but I actually did enjoy taking that picture and to me that’s what counts.

This page, like the last one, is clearly not finished. However, frogs are cute and these past few weeks especially I’ve been in too much pain to even be able to hold a pencil properly, so I don’t care. I don’t have a lot to say about this page, I just really like frogs and I had a phase a few months ago after I fell down the stairs and sprained my ankle where I would constantly draw frogs.

(Pencil, markers and the power of boredom)

This page doesn’t really have a particular theme the three parts are all completely unrelated. There’s a frog, a self portrait, and scribbles. There’s also some notes from when I was doing my portrait. They translate to: “I don’t know what I’m doing T-T”, “I don’t know why I added that _help_”, “I can’t concentrate” and “1st try ink using picture- hands don’t cooperate”. Not sure what that last one is supposed to mean but oh well.

(Markers, ink pen, colored pencils and oil paint?)

My dream is to become a children’s book illustrator, I’ve been thinking about making a book about a moth and it’s adventures for a while, this is a (unfinished) sketch of the kind of look I’d like the pages of my book to have. There’s a lot of room for improvement but regardless I’ll be posting more of my sketches for my book “Paulilla la polilla” (Paulilla the moth) in the future.

PS: I’m probably never making the book but one can dream I guess.

My sketchbook is a really personal and liberating place for me. Ever since I got fibromyalgia, doing art hasn’t been the same for me. I find myself constantly comparing my abilities now to the ones I had before, I’m constantly frustrated with my inability to preform as I had come to expect of myself, and I’m constantly in a self deprecating state of mind where nothing I do is good enough. So, it is in this awfully made sketchbook (I made it) that I can allow myself to just be and not judge me so harshly for things that aren’t even my fault.

This sketch is probably the most fun one I’ve done in a while. I wanted to play with different faces and expressions and even though it’s nowhere near perfect, that’s fine because it wasn’t about the end result, it was about the experience and the joy that drawing gives me.

Spooky pin ups because it’s Halloween and I haven’t posted anything about it this whole month and it should be embarrassing.

(Oil pastels on paper- I apologize to whoever sees this)

(My little brothers markers on a random scrap of paper)