Still Painting, and making music now

I hope everyone is doing well. It’s been a long time (December 2023) since I’ve sent one of these out, so I hope I’m doing it correctly. If you happen to get 10 of them, you only need to read one. If you didn’t receive one, then how in the world did you end up here? 😝

I’ve been busy painting, and making music now. Yep, trying my hand at something new. Over the past few years I’ve found that I need temporary breaks from painting. If I don’t pause for a while, then one painting tends to bleed into another. Music is something that I’ve always wanted to delve into, but never knew where to start. What better way than to just dive in head first. Scroll towards the bottom if you want to give it a listen. 🎵 Don’t skip over everything else first. 😜

Oh, also, I’ve rebranded my website to patrickriley.art, but everything still forwards to poesoulstudio.com. I wanted to put my name with the site (and domain) to match who’s actually responsible for the artwork. PoeSoul Studio could sometimes cause confusion because no one knew of the person behind the mask. 🙂 This way, people know it’s me, and PoeSoul Studio is where I create. Both patrickriley.art and poesoulstudio.com will always go to the same place. OK, enough with the nerdiness. 🤓

painting #1 (Starting to Wonder)

OK, paintings. I’ve completed a few since December— two watercolors and two oil paintings. The giant 30x40 that I mentioned last time is now complete and framed (Starting To Wonder). I was beginning to think that I’d never finish it. I’d paint for hours and see little progress. Long story short, the billboard-sized paintings won’t be happening again anytime soon. If you have a lot of empty wall space that you’re looking to fill, let me know and I’ll hook you up. I know a guy. 😋

Painting #2 (I Let You Get Away)

Continuing with the “never easy,” one of the watercolors that I worked on didn’t turn out as expected (I Let You Get Away). Initially, it was looking great, and I was happy with the way it was looking. As it started to dry, the paint turned very flat, and a lot of the color just wasn’t there anymore. I seriously thought about throwing it away, but decided to try something crazy, so I mounted it to a wooden panel and coated it with resin. All of the colors came back, and then some. It’s not like my other paintings. Not even close, but I decided I’d put it on my website amongst the rest of my work.

Painting #3 (I may not say it enough)

The other watercolor (I May Not Say It Enough) was almost a complete repeat of the painting that I just mentioned. I finished it, loved it, but decided a few days later to add a shadow next to the small vase. Big mistake! The water was a bit more ‘wet’ that day, and my shadow started to. Let’s just say it wasn’t a shadow anymore. Left with no other option than pitching it into the trash, I decided to carefully remove the flower and vase from the mess that I had created and used a black piece of drawing paper as the backdrop. Presto! Or, as Bob Ross would say, “a happy accident.” It’s my favorite watercolor so far, and I’m thinking about keeping it for myself. It’s one of those paintings that doesn’t picture well because the depth doesn’t show through a photo. I always take videos of my paintings when I add them to my website. I couldn’t even do that with this one, so I had to skip that process.

Painting #4 (A place to rest my mind)

This all brings me to my most recent painting (A Place To Rest My Mind). Maybe my favorite so far. It and ‘It’s What I Live For’ are both painted in the same style. I think this style matches me the most, and I think I’m going to do everything like this from now on. It’s a brush/palette knife mixture, whereas most others are strictly palette knives, or at least 95% of it. I cannot overstate how much paint I used on ‘A Place To Rest My Mind’. Easily 6-8 ounces for the trees in the upper right. The leaves rise 1/8” or more from the canvas. Heck, I used a lot of paint everywhere. I sort of went a little crazy. 🤪 I have a video here that captures most of the mayhem that I unleashed on this one. I sort of want to keep it too. 🤗

And… making music

Last, but not least, making music. Like I mentioned earlier, where do you start? I decided the best place was to just ignore ‘how’ you should create music and just create what worked for me. Similar to the way that I paint. Correct or incorrect, it didn’t, and doesn't matter. At least not to me. 😝 When you’re at peace with something that you create, does it really matter if it’s wrong or right?

I have one of my songs linked below. I wanted to give it a haunted feel with a bit of a beat. I plan on creating everything in this style. The studio is being used for more than painting now. 😁 I’ll have some more music to share next time.

wrapping it all up

If you’ve made it this far, I applaud your dedication! 👏 I’ll email more art and music updates in the near future. It may be two months, or it may be ten. 🤔 It’s fairly obvious by now that my sending schedule is not what it used to be. 🫢 I encourage you to visit my website for more frequent updates. I’m always uploading stuff there before I combine everything into a newsletter email. The link to my site is https://patrickriley.art (or https://poesoulstudio.com). I’ll be adding music related stuff to https://patrickriley.art/music.

Thanks for always being there!

Until next time,

P.S. For any book lovers or avid readers out there, you may want to check out https://abookandadog.com. My wife is a fanatical bibliophile. That’s putting it mildly. Anyway, she has her own site where she reviews books, writes about books, talks about new books and book adventures, and anything else that has to do with books or reading. Check out the site when you get a chance! 📚 She sends out a monthly update— here’s the September recap: https://abookandadog.com/recapblog/september-2024-recap. If you’re looking for book recommendations, sign up using the popup or the form at the bottom of her website.