Su Doyle -artistic endeavors and marketing adventures

Uncovering patterns through sketching

There's nothing like drawing with numb fingers at the edge of the ski lift to focus the mind.  First, there's no time to overthink the subject matter.  Second, if you don't simplify the drawing, and uncover the patterns, you'll freeze before you finish.  Good thing all skiers look similar bundled up with gear -- makes it ok to combine the skier from one chair with one on the next one...

The Big Picture

I'm always thinking about the "big picture" that I'm going to paint, when I have the time. But sometimes that distracts me from the big picture of life.  That creativity is a process.  And that the sketch I do in ballpoint pen on a napkin can sometimes get me there more directly than time in the studio...

To Dye For - experiments in alchemy

I've bought plenty of stuff where the color wasn't quite right, including a used car in light blue (which I got a great deal on).  I figured I would get used to the sickly, silvery shade, but I still hated the look of the car when I sold it five years later. 

Hard to change a car color, but clothes?  I had a closet full of "not quite right" colors (of course, I got a great deal on those too..). 

It started with the lab coat hanging in my closet.  A white summer jacket that only needed a mixture of "taupe" "cocoa brown" to put it back in rotation. 

Then I got caught up in the alchemy of it all... I bought 6 bottles of liquid dye and started mixing... throwing perfectly good stuff in with the poor choices.  The result?  Instant gratification. Completely different colors and fabrics now go together because they're the same tonal family.  

I was ready to throw sheets, beach towels, tablecloths into the next batch. But the obsession ended when my top loading 19-yr old washer died.  At least it went out in style.

License to Doodle -- and about time too...

My friend Kim recently taught a Zentangle workshop with a group of enthusiastic teens.  I'm as skeptical as a teenager when looking at new artistic concepts, so I had to give it a try, especially after hearing it described as "yoga for the mind"...  

Now I'm smitten with Zentangles (I'm also a new fan of tanglepatterns.com).

Zentangles haven't improved my drafting skills, and I've yet to feel the full-on benefits of the mind-yoga connection, but I find the hands-on repetition soothing and meditative.  Sometimes, after a long day,  my brain is too tapped out to paint.  Or I don't have my watercolor/pastel/sewing supplies handy.  Zentangles are a good solution.  Plus, I found that I can watch a few kids on the beach while I'm doing them -- I'm a lousy lifeguard when I'm painting...

The "Drive-Thru" Painting

Not as fattening as it sounds.   I prefer taking back roads on my morning commute and get seduced by the scenery.  Of course, there's rarely time to pull over and take careful, composed source photographs.  So I've resorted to blindly holding up my camera (or phone) and taking blurry shots out the window and sorting them out later. 

 

I like the way that they capture the transience of the landscape.  

I feel like I'm transferring their energy to the canvas when I paint them!