newest canvas and sketching

i started working with an older canvas i had started a while ago.  i loved the background, and had sketched a face onto it.  as i worked on bringing the face to life i fell in love with what she was telling me.

i felt she called for dreadlocks, beads and feathers, a mother nature figure.

here she is with even more personality and her dreads coming in.

i then shaded her dreads and added some more details.  she is now waiting for fixative to dry before attempting more detail work as i'm afraid to move forward without that added protection.  if i do something i'm not in love with it can more easily be wiped away now.

in the meantime i'm practicing.  sketching some ideas that i have.  a friend suggested i work on mermaids which is a great leap for me but one i'm thrilled to make.  i also searched for some feathers to learn the shape and nature of them.  and hands.  hands are an important skill.  (they also are a very strange looking shape if you are studying them).

these hands i found on google, seperately, and i just sketched them any old way, not thinking about how they looked on the paper.  i was intending to draw more hands in different sizes, filling the paper up with different hand gestures.  however, when i finished the second hand i noticed there was magic brewing in the sketchbook, and another canvas idea is born!

i'm questioning where i am going in my artwork.  where does my style lie?  i seem to waver between wanting to be more realistic and then wanting to be more abstract.  i enjoy the energy of the female figure, the goddess.  i just want to bring light to others as well as my own home.  but where do i go from here?  i'm afraid of the realistic figure.  am i good enough?  i don't want to compare because that takes away my own joy.  i think it's fun to bounce between going for a more realistic figure- not going for hyper-realism, because i know my limits- and the more fantasy/abstract/from the heart style.  i suppose it's fine for me to bounce like that, no rules in my house for my own artwork and what brings me joy.  it's just that i wonder if i will ever get to the point where someone will look at a painting and go "well, that right there is a jenny gabrenas painting if i ever saw one!"  there are some artists that you just know a painting is theirs or else someone is studying under them.  oh well, its my A.D.D, i can't concentrate on one style, i must bounce!  call me tigger.

until later,
jenny