It's a really strange week so far.
We all got together Monday morning at a meeting, the major happenings were outlined. We get our spaces on the 6th. we get student helpers to assist in sorting out our spaces. We all meet on the morning of the 6th and we are told everything will be fine.
Maybe I am a fatalist but I can't help feeling something is going to go horribly wrong….It can't be this straightforward can it?
We are struggling to come up with a name for our show. We had a list up on the notice board with suggestions but a lecturer took it down as the suggestions were too abysmal.
I have been trying to find find fixing for my paintings. We have a few issues with the exhibition boards that we are using. They are really poor quality, lightweight monstrosities. They have a thin board front and back and the gap between is filled with a corrugated cardboard so it is very difficult indeed to get anything to stay fixed for longer than a day. Ideally everything should be double skinned to allow fixings to go all the way through but unfortunately they are only single boads.
We are putting up the next postcard show event on Thursday at the Brewhouse Arts centre in Burton upon Trent. The exhibition starts on the 6th May and an opening event takes place at 12.15pm on Saturday 10th May. All proceeds go towards the Derby University Fine Art Degree show.
I feel in quite a comfortable position at the moment. I have enough work for the degre show but I will continue to make more work to allow me to be more selective.
I painted 12 small paintings on Friday and had more success photographing my work.
My one concern is my journals. i am seriously behind in these and I am finding it hard to manage them. How can you explore and research when you already have done the work and have a clear idea of what your show is going to be like. I find it difficult to be creative in them atthe moment
I've more or less finished my second large painting. There is still a bit to do in places as there is on the first one but I shall leave them to dry for a few weeks until I move into my show space then do the finishing touches in the space.
I feel a lot more confortable now that I have broken the back of the large paintings. I am on schedule and have enough work to show. I have two large paintings and 150 smaller paintings. The target is 200 so I've just 50 more to do in the next 4 weeks. I will only actually display about 100 in my show but I want to be able to be selective.
I still have lots of work to do in my journals and my career in practice as well making more work for a solo show that is coming up in July at the Chamber Art Gallery in Moffat, Scotland. I am also taking part in the Wirksworth Festival, Derbyshire so I will need to continue making paintings for the time being.
Our photographer is with us on Monday to shoot the work for the catalogue. I really don't know what painting or image to use. I don't know what is best, to have a shot of a whole painting or a detail shot of part of a painting. Decisions, decisions.
I discovered today that I have been given the exact amount of space that I had asked for. Brilliant! and I've also been given the space I wanted, my own studio space which is great as I don't have to worry about moving the work eleswhere and I can concentrate on continuing the work in my space.
I had a minor disaster with one of the panels of my latest large paintings. The panels had stuck together because of the acrylic paint between the joins, it is what I had expected and has happened before but I got a little clumsy with the knife when seperating them and sliced a 6 inch gash on one edge! Oops, I've glued it back down and hopefully this will do the trick. Luckily it is in a part of the painting that I had planned to overpaint so not too much damage done.
I'm still having problems photographing my work. I don't know which is the lesser of two evils – A reflective glare over areas of each painting or a duller image. I have sought advice from some photography people so hopefully they can help me out.
All the photography that I did the other day is just rubbish. I set up a tripod in a well, naturally area and took around 100 photos of my work. When I uploaded them onto the computer they were dreadful. They were all in focus with great detail but the natural light was a bit too strong and light reflected off of everything and looked just horrible. I guess I'll have to do it again but in a well naturally lit (but not in direct light) spot. I don't know if this spot exsists but I'll see what I can do.
I'm getting really fed up of documenting my work, I'm just not very good at it. They come out either blurred, distorted, washed out with light or just plain dull.
Has anyone out there got any tips for photographing paintings? please!
On the plus side I reached the end of the first stage of my second large painting. I'm really happy with it and can't wait to start painting into it with oil paint.
