I didn’t spend as much time drawing today as I have been lately. I have company coming by shortly, and I wanted to make sure I got an earlier start than usual on my drawing and writing. Today I added a few new bits of plant-life, and researched a little bit on how to make my grass look better. I only added a bit of extra texture to the grass, but I plan to do more to it in the future until it looks the way I want it to look. At the moment, it’s not quite at that point.

I think I’m going to have to move that tree in the upper left a bit farther to the side in order to give the sentinel – which should be the main focus point on the page – a lot more room. The only other changes I feel I need to make are those dark purple bushes in the bottom left. I’m not sure what I would change precisely, but I feel they don’t look so good. I’m not even really sure why I don’t like them!

Something I’ve learned over the past few months (and it’s something kind of silly when I think about it) is that when you’re working on the small scale, like I was today on those red and purple unfinished bushes on the left there, you don’t have to worry so much about the detail. The detail comes through just fine when you view it at it’s normal size. It’s something I’ve seen painters do all my life, and never really understood it. They often put creative design over realism.  The purpose of painting and creating art isn’t necessarily to recreate it as you would see it in real life. It’s something I’m still trying to figure out for myself, and I don’t really feel like I’m doing a good job explaining. It’s difficult for me to put into words right now, and I feel that I’ve always tried too hard to make things as realistic as possible. I’ve struggled with that in the past. Discouraging myself came easy when you have real life to measure up to.

I’m not sure I made much sense there as I over explained the point I was trying to get across. Oh well, I’m still figuring things out myself, so I guess it makes some sense that I’m having trouble articulating it.

Anyways, that’s going to be all from me today! Thanks for checking this out. I want to try and finish this in the next few days as it’s already a lot more complicated than I was planning to make it.