Time after time, flop after flop

I feel like I'm having a harder time getting the proportions/shapes right lately (it must be that I'm missing that Bargue!). Though I say it in jest, it's probably true. And I haven't been doing much of that kind of practice at home either. There are some proportion issues, and as usual, I've drawn her several times, but I always have a really hard time capturing this particular model's likeness. She's very pretty. But I tend to exaggerate features, and somehow the way her features are situated just isn't so amenable to being exaggerated (and again, she's quite lovely! I promise. It's just me). Also, I didn't have any lighter paper ripped as I was running out the door, so I grabbed the darker stuff, and I was having a harder time seeing my drawing on it (draw darker, Stacy! darker), which probably contributed to the proportion issues. But in the last 5 minutes I threw some white on there because, well, I had the chalk, and what did I have to lose, really? That was sort of fun.

Sometimes drawing and painting energizes me, and other times, it's just depressing. I don't know what makes that difference. I've heard someone say that their mood is only as good as their last painting. I don't know if that's exactly it for me (though it always stinks to turn out a stinker of a painting--see below--and I didn't even take pictures of all my failed attempts, ha). I think for me, it's just the realization of how far I still have to go, and not knowing how to get there (or feeling as though it's out of reach). It's the hopeless feeling that gets me.

This was an hour's worth of rose sketching from yesterday afternoon. Painting is the worst, ha :P I think I need to sit a little farther away so I don't see so much detail. It confuses me to no end. Part of me really hopes that I'm a respectably good painter someday, if only for the sake of this humiliating trail of bad paintings I'm leaving here on a regular basis :P If eventually I can paint with some skill, won't that validate my failed attempts? At that point, do they become interesting retrospective stepping stones? I'm gonna go with that for now and try not to assume that my current level of functioning is predictive of future capacity, ha.

Also, it sounds like the atelier where I've been attending drawing sessions may not be in existence by next summer (which has been the talk for a while now, but is beginning to sound more definite). It was one of those "had me at hello" moments walking into that drawing session for the first time, and I've just been biding my time until I could make it work (of course, I generally try not to let on to those kinds of hopes because the potential disappointment is just too real). Now it feels a little hopeless. And if I can't make it work here, I'm not sure how I could ever make it work anywhere else that teaches this kind of thing. But I'll just keep doing what I can, and find other avenues if necessary. It's fine.