I’m not sure how current my use of a blogging facility is but one thing I do know is – is that anyone that doesn’t should try it. I find it an incredibly powerful tool for introspection – and the remote inspection of my work. I never write whilst in my studio so there is an element of separation that allows a clear mind as it were. The simple act of writing can often cast a helpful light on problems obscuring development, offering next steps and solutions to visual problems.
This powerful effect can come in the form of inadvertently prompting ideas – which probably would of remained in the further recesses of the mind out of sight. Blogging also allows the fine tuning of existing ideas simply by testing what spills out in the contents of the writing.
It is here that I start and I am looking for the obscurity in my field of vision to be lifted in the form of colour combinations, you see I have three drawings ready to be coloured but they are all already at that “precious stage”. This is partly because I have spent a lot of time with them and grown to love what they are becoming, however, each have been made to be coloured and the current “precious stage” needs to be advanced via the risk of colour addition. What I need to work out is the following:
– Do I use different shades of the same colour with accents of contrasting? For instance blues with streaks of different orange shades.
– Multicoloured?
– Equal amounts of contrasting colours?
– Black, white and shades of one other colour could be an idea…
I’m really not sure at the moment but just having written the potential options down has helped to focus things a little. Also another thing I will need to do is test different opacities of inks before making a final call.
Ideally I would like to use my inks in a different way – with more purpose and sense of direction as opposed to blindly seeing what happens and works. This is the real battleground in what I am doing at the moment.
Moving on now to another thought on my mind. How to price work? Now I’m as unknown and obscure as they come but spend many, many working days – usually weeks on a single drawing – clearly a far more expensive way to produce work than say an expressive, gestural drawing that takes an hour – or even a day or two (so the facility of very low prices just will not cut it against the amount of time I spend). With these factors in mind how can I set reasonable prices on something that has taken so long? Any comment on this would be incredibly helpful.
Thank you as always for reading.
www.stuartbelton.com
