The Art & Poetry of Mary Coleman

Today I finished the outline on my canvas and I’m so glad to be done with that step. Drawing from a grid is boring, time consuming, and awful. I must do it in order to transfer the sketch onto the painting surface. If I try and paint without a drawing…

Today I took a Ritalin and just powered through most of the grid drawing on the canvas. I needed to get as much as possible all in one go because it’s like ripping off a bandaid, the longer you take, the worse the pain and I truly find this part…

Today I continued to draw the outline on my canvas. It’s a little progress but some progress is better than nothing and I can’t get myself to do more than a small portion at a time of this task. It’s incredibly boring. This is probably going to be the hardest…

I have decided to take on two painting projects at the same time, one easier, the other hard, because I predict that the current one I started is going to be overwhelmingly difficult and boring at times (a lot of creases and folds). I’ll need a break and something more…

I gridded my drawing and the canvas today. Tomorrow I will begin drawing on the figures, and I’ll divide that into three days of work because each person is a lot of lines and the process of transferring the drawing onto canvas is painstaking and time consuming. You have to…

Today I started my new painting by tracing the image on my iPad. Next I will grid it, grid the surface I’m painting on, and finally draw the lines onto the canvas and outline them in acrylic pen. I use un-stretched canvas from pads because it’s easier to store (I…

I finished my latest PPE painting. It’s not my favorite that I’ve done but it’s completed. My next one is going to be quite a challenge (even though this last one turned out a lot more challenging than I had anticipated). It’s going to be 16 x 20 inches and…

I finished the mask and head of the figure in my PPE painting yesterday and did the folds of the outstretched arm today. It’s coming together better than I had hoped and I’m actually starting to like it. The glove looks better with the figure filled in behind it and…

I can put my braids up across my head now. My hair is just long enough to do it. My goal is to get my hair long enough to wrap my braids around my head like a crown. I’ve not dyed it since I cut off all the damaged areas…

Today I worked more on the mask of the figure. I’m finding it hard to work for an extended period of time, so I’m satisfying myself with a small amount of progress daily. It will take quite a while to finish the picture, but if I work on it a…

Today I worked on the mask and head of the figure in my PPE painting. The glove is still bugging me but hopefully I can think of what to do about it while I finish the rest of the painting. This isn’t my favorite piece I’ve ever done by any…

Yesterday I drew the figure onto my paper and outlined the pencil lines in acrylic pen. Then I did the background. Today I worked on the glove and put a second layer on the background. The glove was really tricky because the way it looked in the picture just didn’t…

Today I started a PPE painting and got the image picked out and traced. Now I just need to grid it and transfer the image onto the paper I’m painting on (after that is gridded as well). It’s a much simpler image than last time because I didn’t feel like…

Tomorrow is the first day of January and I start work on my resolutions. Here are the goals for tomorrow based on my 6 resolutions: You get to build your perfect space for reading and writing. What’s it like? My studio is my perfect place for all things creative. It…