Improvement and Practice

I try to improve myself in my craft and I try to be critical and objective and whatever. And among my defects, I think, are: Difficulty with use of color, bad pulse, stiff and rigid human figure. So, what do I do to improve those? The following:

1. Difficulty with use of color: When I'd just started out in university (and whenever I tried using colors, really), it was hard for me to choose and combine colors. I guess that situation stems from having drawn most of the time and just not coming that much in contact with the need to use color and the difficulty to use color manifested itself with much more strength in university, because I was obligated to paint.
And what's the point of painting, if you're not going to use that gorgeous spectrum of colors that oil paints have, right?
SO, to try to remedy that, I've started coloring on a regular kid coloring book. The one I've been using is a Precious Moments coloring book, that's REALLY REALLY old! And I DO feel it's helping me a lot, although I've only been doing it for maybe two weeks. Maybe less.
But each time I get started on a new one, it's easier to visualize what colors to use and I'm very slowly becoming less intimidated when I realize I have to use color in other things.
This is the coloring book:

These are the latest ones I've colored:

And this one's my favorite so far. I think it's so cute, because it reminds me of Christmas so much and she looks so warm and cozy with her kind of tartan skirt. And I really like how the colors resulted, I think I almost smell pine when I look at it:

2. Bad pulse: I don't know where it's rooted, I guess it's just something that some people have by default and some don't. I have bad pulse and I know this, because when I'm drawing, I find myself making a kagillion lines, then erasing them and practically making the whole drawing again so it's cleaner. And when I'm making the clean lines, I have to concentrate and pretty much not breathe, to be able to make a straight line x_x
And sometimes, even, I'm obligated to make the line more than once, because it's so difficult. And I'm helping that with tracing, which I haven't been doing for more than two weeks, either, but I know that it's helping me a lot.
So this is one of the drawings I've traced. I'm just using the coloring book and when I'm done with this one, I'll just get a new one and repeat the same thing.

3. Rigidity and stiffness in the human figure: Before, I didn't care much that my characters or human figure drawings were just standing up with their hands behind them, for the most part. And I actually got really intimidated when I had a mental image of a figure in another pose, other than standing.
I actually kind of still have that difficulty with that, but it's much easier now, with PhotoBooth and pictures from everywhere and knowing that anything and anybody can pretty much be a model or reference. BUT this problem is simply solved by sketching, which I still don't do as often as I should and I'm thinking of just incorporating it into the coloring and tracing routine and just sketching after I'm done with those.
Here's a very light sketching session from sometime this week.


I intend to be as good as I can in my craft.
And, really, the masters had so many difficulties and such perfect work, that there's really no excuse for an artist these days to be nothing short of FANTASTIC with all the resources and materials and KNOWLEDGE that we have these days.
It may seem dumb, but a quote from that movie "The Last Samurai" always gets me, when he sees how the Japanese are so dedicated and devoted to whatever their task is. He says: "These people wake up everyday, to perfect what they strive for" Or some shit along those lines.
That's what I want to do.

I'm still working on the eBay and PayPal thing. I've already found out how I'm going to ship things and about how much it's going to be to ship and pack and with what company. How convenient is it that USPS has a branch RIGHT HERE in little ol' Panama? So I'll be sending things through courier with them and add the price of packing and shipping to the price of the piece.
And I'm looking into what account I'm going to use to receive payments in and building the shop in eBay.

Also, remember about the group in facebook! Feel free to join, invite whoever you think will be interested in my work, leave comments, ideas, feedback, thoughts or anything in the wall of the group or in any of the pictures. And if you want, even, add me to your friends, but remember to tell me that you found the group through my blog, because that would seriously make my day <3 Gabriela Handal
I've been thinking of making a Gabriela Handal Arte fan page D:
The purpose of that would be to make separate albums for the different categories of images, like, paintings, drawings, tattoo designs, commissions. Stuff like that. It would also be really great, because I'm pretty sure much more people would be able to see.

ALSO, can you believe I have a twitter account now? x_x
Thank my fellow artist Richard for that XD
Here it is, if you want to follow: GabrielaHandal.
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