Phase 1 notes:

This may not be very legible ;) But I spent a lot of time really trying to be honest and think of  everything that I'd consider a limitation. To me, the biggest ones that stood out are time constraints (I have a full time job and other obligations), and aspiring to projects that are more than I can chew at this point in time.

It seems to me that the best option will be to 1) work at a pace that's reasonable for the amount of time I have...so that would be slow and steady, and 2) pick something simpler for now. As time goes by and my skill grows, hopefully I can take on some of those bigger ideas, but they're just too overwhelming right now.

 

Phase 2 notes:

There's a TON of stuff that inspires me! I wrote down everything I could think of and circled the ones I think I'm really MOST inspired by. A lot of these are things in nature and other concrete objects, but I'm also really inspired by different abstract concepts and deep emotions.

 

Phase 3 notes:

When I came to this class, I'd already had some ideas about painting more animals, and as I looked over my notes from Phase 2, I realized just how much of my inspiration comes from animals and nature. Actually, as I was thinking about it, I realized how many times I've already painted or drawn animals. It's something I keep coming back to. But I also like telling stories!  So for my first hypothesis, I'm going to try to tell stories through animal paintings and illustrations. I'm not going to do anything overly complicated at this point, but I already love this idea.

 

I am looking for some feedback regarding style, though. When I was younger, I always tried to make my paintings and drawings look as realistic as possible. As I've progressed as an artist I've become bored with that. I've been experimenting with different styles and I'm just trying to see what kind of results I get (The cover image of the toucan is an example of the sort of direction I'm going). Would this be a good time to work on developing exactly what type of style I want to draw my animals in?

 

I haven't started my paintings for Phase 3 yet, but I plan to post them if this hypothesis ends up being one I want to stick with!