Why I continue writing.

I was reading Mark Koopman's (Mark Koopmans: Vignettes from VA (and DC, Too!) blog post and started to answer his question when I decided to write a blog post stating why I continue writing.

There is no single reason why I do so. I do harbor some vague notion that I might write something that someone someday will enjoy, maybe even a lot of someones. But that's putting the cart before the horse.

I like writing because I enjoy seeing a story develop and come to life.

I enjoy the surprises I get during the writing process, especially when things I never thought of suddenly appear and make the story better.

I enjoy the process of visualizing scenes and characters.

I enjoy seeing the way my characters change as a result of what happens to them within the story.

I enjoy the challenge of making my words say what I mean, and of searching for the right word to convey what I'm trying to say.

I like a good plot and do my best to develop one. I don't mind if the plot undergoes changes as I write the story.

The more my writing relates to my internal feelings and beliefs about life, the better I like it, that is, the more connected I am to my stories.

Being a writer has been a dream of mine since I was a teenager. I'm still dreaming.

How about you? Do any of these reasons jive with yours?

Am I A Blogger?

I haven't posted much during the past year or so. Lately, my posts have been primarily about painting. Now that my latest and, probably my last, painting course has ended, I've been thinking about my blog and whether I still have anything to say about anything. It seems that I've gone dry.

This doesn't mean I haven't been writing. I've been writing right along. I'm well into a new novel I started in January, putting much more time into it during the past month or so since my painting class ended. So, writing is still an important part of my life. Painting will now take its (for me) rightful place behind writing. Painting has been a wonderful trip. I've learned a great deal, and enjoyed it a lot, but truth be told, writing is my passion. How painting will fit into my life in the future remains to be seen.

The question now is what direction will my blog take. Will I just post whatever occurs to me, much as I've done since my blog's inception? Will I resume interacting more with other blogs the way I used to do? I still read most of the blogs I follow even if I haven't been making comments lately. I've noticed that a lot of people I follow haven't been posting much at all on their blogs lately.

I'm not sure what the state of blogging is for writers these days. Some are still very active, but others seemed to have in effect closed shop. Maybe our expectations were unrealistic when we began blogging in this new era of social media. If blogging doesn't accomplish what we want it to, then maybe closing shop is the best thing to do. Perhaps other activities, such as Facebook and Twitter, are better.

So this is where I am in my blogging mind: I'm not sure where I'm headed.

I'd like to hear your thoughts on the state of blogging. What are you finding the most rewarding thing to do in social media?

UNF Color Theory: Final Group Project

Our final project for the semester was a food gathering based on the color wheel. My group had to prepare appetizer, main course with two sides, and desert based on a monochromatic color scheme. My team chose yellow. We presented a fruit tray of all yellow fruits. We had yellow drinks, mahi mahi, plantains, grilled corn, and banana flam. We also used a yellow table cloth and napkins, and a yellow banana inspired poster. It was called 'Banana Cabana'.

This photo is of another teams food based on complementary colors.

This was a fitting and sumptuous end to a great semester of color theory. In some ways we came to feel like a small family in the classroom. This meal was like a family coming together for a celebratory meal.

UNF Color Theory: Color Inventory "You Are What You Eat"

This assignment was an interesting one. We had to choose our favorite food, then make a color inventory based on the different colors found in the food, painting all the colors in acryla gouache. Then we had to create a self-portrait in any media using the color inventory.

I chose for my favorite food trail mix, which had a lot of browns and earth tones. I painted the self-portrait in acrylic. This is the result.

UNF Color Theory: Color Constancy

In this project we had to paint the same scene four times, but under different lighting conditions each time. This is a scene from the street I live on seen from my garage. The four lighting conditions were upper left early morning to around noontime, upper right overcast sky, lower right foggy weather, and lower left mid-day clear sky.

Each scene took about 5 hours to paint. Each is 9x7 inches, painted in acrylic on Bristol board, mounted on illustration board. These are, if I remember correctly, my first paintings en plein air.

UNF Color Theory: Psychological Self-Portrait

In this assignment, we were to choose two contrasting words to use as the basis for a psychological self-portrait. The words I chose were 'passive' and 'aggressive'. We had to draw two abstract images representing each word respectively, and base the colors used in each on the meaning or connotation we felt represented each word. We then had to paint  two self-portraits using the same colors used in the abstract images.

This is the result of my word choice:

Each painting is 5x7 inches, painted in acryla gouache on Bristol board mounted on illustration board. The two on the left represent 'passive' and the two on the right 'aggressive'.

UNF Color Theory: The Bezold Effect

The Bezold Effect is based on repeating patterns of colors in which only one color is changed, but by changing the one color, the pattern/picture looks different from the original one, perhaps like a different pattern.

I found this difficult to do, but came up with this:

In these two pictures all colors are the same in each picture except for the green and orange. While the patterns are the same, the color values shift quite a bit.

The gray dots in the corners are the same value in both pictures, yet look as if the ones on the orange are darker gray than those on the green. The inner gray circles are a darker value of gray than the outer gray circles. The ones on the orange almost look brown and darker than the ones on the green.

The blue circles in both paintings are the exact same hue, but the ones on the orange appear to be a darker value than the ones on the green.

Do these look different enough from each other to register as two different patterns?