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Greetings!

I wanted to pop in and share my latest ‘femme fatale’. I’m at a total standstill as far as my writing is concerned. My head has been in a total fog lately, and I’m placing some of the blame on my ethics class. I have to wonder if information overload comes a little too easy as we get older.

Sometimes I feel like I’m on top of my game, and the next minute I could swear that the pages I’m staring at are written in a foreign language.

Anyway, the image is Carla, one of the characters from my never-ending story. I started to write her segment a couple of times this week and finally decided that it’s no use. This story has to go into a deep sleep until I can focus.

The good news is that I’ve been thinking lately about what I want to do right now – to kind of stir creative juices and maintain some kind of creative outlet – and I decided that, since I enjoy female art so much, I’d try to zoom in on that and look for ways to jazz up my lady art. I’d love to develop a style, as I’ve said before… and that takes a steady mix of work and play.

So, for the next couple of weeks (or months) I might stick to female illustrations in an effort to improve my skills. Three of my biggest issues right now are hair, faces, and hands (or feet). Believe it or not, the guide that was used for this illustration was a photograph of Jennifer Lopez. Sorry Jen!! Haha!

The body came out almost spot on, but the face and hair were extremely challenging. I think she makes a great Carla though!

I’m happy that I’ve found something to do other than study, eat, and watch movies. And speaking of movies, I watched a really good one a couple of weeks ago called Hidden Figures, which is “the story of a team of female African-American mathematicians who served a vital role in NASA during the early years of the U.S. space program”. If you haven’t seen it I would definitely recommend it. I thought it was really good!

Which brings me to my next thought, which is the fact that I’d like to show a little more diversity in my female art… something I hope to accomplish over the course of my ‘female’ project.

Learning to create images that include various races, ages, and body sizes might prove to be an excellent challenge. Even women from different eras depicting the different styles of dress might be an interesting perspective to take. Who knows? The sky is the limit as they say.

I think that’s about all for now. I’m just excited to have a new project to think about, and thought it would be nice to share my excitement with someone else. As always, if you have an idea or comment about ways to turn my lady project into something unusual or unique – feel free to let me know!

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the illustration!

Until later,
Janet