When you see artwork from your coloring heroes, it’s easy to be distracted by the rustic wood background and artfully placed curl of ribbon.
You see the presentation, not the coloring.
Which is a terrible thing to do to yourself!
And by little, I do mean little... at least for me.
I try to do at least one color study per week, it's my way of keeping my drawing skills sharp.
99.999% of my work outside the classroom setting is devoted to developing class curriculum. This means that I spend a ton of time working below my skill level, out of my style, or using a commercial image. I love teaching but it definitely takes a toll on my creative spirit.
At only 3 inches square, I can't make the "I don't have time for that" excuse. So even if an image takes me several hours over many days to complete, it's still a fraction of the time a large scale image would take.
The constraint of working small also forces me to focus on only the most important details. Maybe I work on accurately capturing shape or spacing. Sometimes I celebrate color. I try not to much time planning; not planning something to death is a lesson in itself.
Few of my Threebys are worthy of public viewing- they're exercises, not the main event. You can find them scattered around my studio, in the bottoms of drawers, wedged in-between pots of gesso and GAC. Most hit the circular file after spending a few weeks bouncing around my desktop.
