No red sky

Hello all! I hope you are all having a Sunday just as you like it to be.
Here at home, Sunday is, for me and my partner Marta, our fasting day. No food or drink until next day mid-day. We decided to implement that as a resolution for the year 2019. We love it. This is not only a day of rest from work, but a physiological comma for the body to process what's there to be dealt with in the depths of the organism. A time for the organs to be free to restore their alchemy and tidy up their laboratory.

I always wish I was drawing and painting more. But this week was heavily focused on the writing of my business plan for the Irish Back to Work Enterprise Scheme I intend to apply for. Next month I will submit my proposal. With the research I have done I am confident I will receive financial support for my business for the next two years. I am spending only a quarter of my time, early morning, drawing, to keep the form. The rest of my day is all about market research, target market, brand identity, aim of the business, etc. I have to analyse my business, name and plan ahead things with the cold heart of a businessman. 
I have to say this is good schooling. It gets me into deciding what I really want to commit for and in what way I am setting myself on up a path for reaching my goal. And this goal is simply to live a sustainable and healthy life as a freelance illustrator. 
​I did not only search the depths of the internet to fetch information about taxation, pricing, licence and copyright, market opportunities, registers and directories of artists, agents, publishers and studios. I ordered and am now reading four books on the topic: The illustrator's guide to law and business practice by Simon Stern, How to be an illustrator by Darrel Rees, Becoming a successful illustrator by Derek Brazell and Jo Davies, and finally The writers' and artists' yearbook 2019 (the one hundred and twelfth edition!)

Anyway! I still had a quarter of my time dedicated to drawing and this time studying skies for the story Meanwhile of my upcoming book Stories not to be told. I borrowed beautiful photographs from my partner Marta. I had been doing studies in black and while for a while then and needed colour to motivate me and start the work at 6am before sunrise. So I went for acrylics. My intend was to spend as less time as possible refining my brushstrokes and achieve a direct effect quickly without too much thinking. I am used to and inexorably drawn toward glazing and layering with paint (oil paint in particular) anytime I have the opportunity, so this was a refreshing direction to take.

I picked two simple pictures at first so to get familiar again with the acrylic medium and painted one every morning.

The sky and clouds always give something special to the atmosphere of a scene. And I want to include these voices in my graphic novel. So next I picked a cloud formation with a bit more complexity and character. 

Ultimately I wanted to bring in more colours and get closer to the palette I envision for this story.

As other things took over by the end of the week I had time to paint only four studies. But nevertheless I was happy. One could spend a life time studying the moods of skies and the infinity of cloud formations. But I could already register and take on board few information here and there about clouds appearance and structure, their behaviour in relation to light and wind, stuff that I hope will sink deep somewhere in my inner visual library ready to be played again at the right opportunity.  

Now, I hope that you have enjoyed this article about my process as much as I enjoyed recounting my activities to you all. 
To keep track of the progression of my work on a daily basis feel free to follow @adriensourdotart on Instagram and AdrienSourdotArtist on Facebook. And of course SHARE if you want to support me.

Wishing you a perfect day. See you all next week for another episode of Trail of colour. Peace.