New paintings and regular art updates.
Progress takes time and thought,
Progress means learning,
Finding your way,
Looking back as well as forward,
Learn from your mistakes,
Find your technique,,
Give time a chance and
Catch up with yourself.
Mind is strange,
Mind knows and sees.
Mind gets ahead, sees a solution
Before you know
How to
Do it
Paint it.
Grow and progress
I was just going to write a short note about how this is progressing but it turned into a little poem. Better get back to work.
X
I’m just starting to block in some brickwork on a painting. I will be painting in the mortar between the bricks to make it more realistic but I decided to play with the image using the layout app that comes with instagram. I quite like the result.
I posted it to Instagram and a friend really liked it.
My question is how would you turn it into a throw. I don’t think printing it onto a surface would work. I think it would need to be woven.
Any ideas? Ideally I want to meet someone who could change my designs into fabric. I was once contacted by an American company, but I checked their website and there was quite a bit of dissatisfaction with them delivering goods and also paying their artists…boo hiss! So I didn’t go with them.
Playing with pattern again, I created this digital drawing of what could be a paisley patterned scarf.
I like the idea of an intensely coloured swirl at the center and a red border. But the outer edges would be black so it would appear to be floating in space, in fact if I added a few tiny dots it would look even more like that.
The simple power of computers is amazing. People have such creativity at their fingertips.
X
I’ve had a really busy day so I haven’t had time to do much on line. Just been rehearsing again.
Anyway just for fun I bought a kaleidoscope last week. Instead of using a digital app this is a real tube with bits of plastic in the end. You turn the end of the tube and the bits move about and the pattern changes.
So I stuck the lens of the camera against the eyepiece and took photos… These are the results. Fun to see patterns that I last saw when I was 6 or 7.
Reminisence is something you do more as you get older.
Over the years I’ve done many paintings and drawings, in oil, acrylic, watercolour, pencil, felt pen, charcoal. And I don’t stick to one style, these are a mixture of figurative and abstract, from 1981 up to about 2008. I don’t think I have ever got bored with art.
Some of the art is very patterned, for instance the spiral cat painting, or illustrative, like the tree drawing and the cross hatched picture of the potteries. I find myself using similar techniques when I do digital drawings.
I draw from my imagination, from life and from photographs.
I have occasionally copied paintings, but I always state the work is after the original artist, in other words I make reference to them originating the work. I have only done this on 2 or 3 occassions when someone has asked for a similar picture to one they have seen. Art is a creative business, and the authorship of it should be respected. One concern I have is over copyright. By publishing my art here I realise I am putting it at risk to some extent, but there is the dilemma of wanting to share creativity with others. I doubt anyone would want to copy mine .
X
Blank period again. I look at paintings I did years ago and wish I could still do the same work. I dont know where I am going, but I know I can paint.
This portrait was taken from my own photograph and done around 2009? Not sure exactly of the date. I loved doing it, the colours, the puppet, the scarves in the back ground. I’m not sure where it went, I’m sure someone bought it. I havent seen the photograph in a while but I might do something similar.
I do have a couple of commissions and I will do them. I have had a busy time and I get tired.
These are two small canvases that I worked on yesterday. I used a modelling medium on them to build up textures One had leaf shapes built up on it, and the other a spiral of shallow spikes.
I also bought some brusho. I’d never used it before. It’s a dust or fine crystals that you can either sprinkle on a wet or damp surface or sprinkle on dry and then add water. The colours change when you add water. For instance lemon yellow looks orange in the pot. You also only need to use tiny amounts. I ended up with a paper plate under the canvases to catch the drops. I tried to get the colours to surround the raised sections then used some acrylic colours to delineate the edges of the shapes.
I’ve left them with Etruria Artists at the warehouse to dry out.
Finished or almost finished? Not sure. I’ve spent the last two days painting this while having my studio open to the public. In the end you lose track of what you are doing. What you are saying. I can waffle forever but it stops making sense after a while.
I like people to ask me questions about art. But then I get nervous. It’s like a fog descends over my head and I can’t articulate or describe what I mean. I hope my paintings are pretty self explanatory but I still try and explain what I am doing. Artists on TV seem to be able to tell people what they are doing, but I can’t do that. I’m a painter not a public speaker…..
So anyway, I finished this painting today. It’s called mermaid.
X
You may or may not have heard of Inktober also known as #inktober or #inktober2018 its something that comes up at this time of year where artisrs are encouraged to draw something in ink for each day of the month. The drawings are shared on instagram under these two hashtags. Oh and I forgot each day has a theme I think. There was a list last year but I haven’t seen it yet.
At the same time the urban sketchers I am a member if have set a 1 inch drawing challenge for the month. Each of us is trying to do a drawing in a 1 inch square for the month of October, so I’m trying to amalgamate the two and kill two birds with one stone as the old saying goes.
Whether I will fulfill the challenge depends on how busy I get, whether I remember to draw and if I remember to post. I think I might report back here once a week. If course I could draw everything and just post one drawing a day, but I like the spontaneity of the idea , so I will try and draw in the moment.
X
Oh I love pattern and colour,
I love birds, flowers and trees,
Green men, phoenix, mythical beasts.
Who wants bland and boring?
Who wants pale and wan?
Why not get those colours
Under your skin.
Life is so exciting.
Life can be such fun.
If only we embrace it
Under the sun.
Never give me plain things
Always give me jazz
Living in a coloured land
Magic has begun.
Mallaband-Brown