single swipe of the brush

I've been experimenting with a Chinese Brush Painting kit I got for Christmas. (yeah, it's taken me that long to break it out) I love the ability to go thick and thin in a single swipe of the brush. I usually stick to ink when I make my originals before scanning them into the computer for digital manipulation. But that's limiting, and when I want a thick line I'm forced to fill in by hand or in Photoshop. So let's see how this works out... start with some ideas from the sketchbook:

Then I take some of those ideas and try them out with the brush:

After I scan it and start to work with it in Photoshop (I love the filter,"stamp", to smooth everything out), I can start to build my drawing. This is what I've come up with so far and I'm interested to see what this looks like in a repetitive pattern. But I think I've gotten just about as much time as I'm going to get this morning sitting in front of this computer. Time now to clear out those breakfast dishes and get these boys outside. I'm actually surprised they've let me sit here now for almost an hour. Wow - a WHOLE hour!

Maybe I'll start to pull all the silk-screening supplies out today. By doing so, it might force myself to actually start printing something, sometime. How many times have I said I was going to work on something and then never get around to it? I've started catching myself having these ideas and I'll say to myself, "Just do it now. Don't try to file it away in the back of that cluttered mind... just go on ahead and do it now." It's helping me to get things done, but at the same time I often feel so scatterbrained because I set off to do one thing, have this idea and convince myself to get that done and then hours later have to go back and finish whatever it was I was in the process of doing to begin with. I can't win.