Teresa Wentzler Art

I know it’s been a long time. It was a difficult winter and spring. But thank goodness I’m back in the studio and back at work.

For those of you wondering about the paper clay experiments I was doing: Unfortunately, new physical constraints have made working on a horizontal/slightly inclined surface untenable, so I’ve had to close that chapter for now.

Work surfaces for me now need to be nearly vertical, so it looks like technical pens and nearly dry color media will be the way forward.

In that vein, I’m working on a purely fanciful drawing. You all know I *love* the challenge of depicting realistic detail. But lately, I haven’t been exercising my imagination very much.

So, I needed to do something without photo reference and see what might happen:

(I’m sure parts of it look familiar! Once I get an idea in my head and don’t take it to fruition somehow, it’s pretty much stuck there!)

It appears that I’m still incapable of doing just a loose, sketch-style drawing in ink. Placing a subject within a context/setting of some kind instead of allowing it to “float” on the page (even if it’s just an imaginary floral study) is my default.

The drawing is on 140 lb. hot press (smooth) watercolor paper, so adding color was the original plan. But, almost immediately, the background got very dark (sigh!), so we’ll see. Since I see things more in terms of value/contrast first and then color after that, I usually find myself at this place. I’m thinking vibrant color might be a good foil to all of that dark hatching… it *is* an imaginary subject, after all!

It is fun to allow a project to unfold without it being so carefully planned at every step for a change!