Sunday, November 14, 2010

Winery Sunset



You can't make this stuff up. This is for real, at least as real as a digital camera can record. The sunset is behind the vine rows of Chrysalis Vineyards near Middleburg, VA. Virginia is the most beautiful state I've ever been in and I want to keep living here. I would move to the "urban countryside" in Northern Virginia if I could but you have to either be born there or be a multi-millionaire or be willing to put in a 90-minute commute each way to and from work. I'll be happy to spend Saturdays out here taking pictures, drawing landscapes, and sipping wine.

This is a photograph. As with the New England autumn leaves I don't see how I could do any better with paint or pixels. Besides I'm having a lot of trouble making any art. Not the commercial work for Trader Joe's, I mean the illustration work that I need to put into my portfolio. The more I look at the work of the current illustrators, whether on deviantART or on their own websites, the more discouraged I get. I feel like the only thing I'm entitled to do is training drawings, thousands of them, and nothing "finished" or elaborate because I don't know how to do the hot exciting work that will get me illustration jobs. I mean, just look at this ossum stuff, this is what they want nowadays. But I don't even know where to BEGIN, let alone do something like that.

1 comment:

Rae Trigg said...

Pyra, you're a very good artist. I don't know why you keep comparing yourself to 20-somethings on DeviantArt. You do stuff I haven't seen anyone else do - for example, your space abstracts. Plus YOU know how to draw. I'm willing to bet those artists on DeviantArt are using computer programs that do most of the work for them and are well off enough to afford the latest equipment. Please stop putting yourself down.