Life is ridic. busy right now, no time to do anything!!! Really all I’ve managed to do for ages is some doodling and a bit of clearing up.
I was doodling on some post-it-notes last night in a spare five minutes and came up with a few new areas to explore. It fascinates me how idle drawings could lead to something exciting.
Using found bits of paper I traced around the contours to produce some sparse, abstract shapes. Thanks mainly to the size of a post-it-note, there is only room for clarity.
I found a tiny ball of wool and poked my pencil right through it and started drawing, the wool restricting the marks. I pulled out a loop of wool and drew inside it, again the wool restricting the scope of the marks. It was like a woolly spirograph.
I pulled a strand of hair and tried to draw against its length on the paper; it kept moving. After 30 seconds of this the marks were quite beautiful.
It seems restriction and resistance are useful tools to record the untangiable.
vintage wallpaper
I’ve been thinking about wallpaper. I wondered if it would be interesting to use a strip my height and draw an image right about where my eyes would be. Grounding the drawing to a home scene I started looking around the house, at nooks and crannies, places normally ignored, seen but not seen: corners in rooms, cracks and thresh- holds.
I’ve discovered that these types of images are particularly bland and I’m wondering just how to handle them. I envisioned drawing but now I’m leaning towards using tracings from photographs.
vintage wallpaper
I’ve discovered my local charity shop sells rolls and rolls of old wallpaper. Today I decided that this will be a great medium for drawing; it’s cheap, available and some of it is vintage. Saturday I will go in and buy it all, give the old girls a bit of a shock! I’m interested in developing within the fields of conceptual and endurance drawing, I’ve got a few ideas up my sleeve.
Right now I’m aiming to do a little bit of my work every evening after work-work, but sometimes it’s impossible. So drawing projects seem to be a more time accessible activity and usually they don’t depend on someone else. I have recently embarked on a few projects that require another body in some way and it is so frustrating. Not that I’m ungrateful.
This here is a shadow silloette drawing of my sister – (she’s not fat, she had her hair down at the time and would be mortified by this image, so next time I’ll get her to put her hair up) a series of pieces currently under construction.
I’ll harp on about it till the cows come home – blogging is a great substitute/ extension of the studio space post study. If you work alone, in isolation, who else do you have to talk to about your work? You still crave feedback. This is the crux of why it is so important to engage with other artist’s work.
Wrapping things up…
I’m dedicating my time to wrapping up as many projects as I can with the aim of loading the front page to my website. It’s amazing how much time I spend organising things – writing ideas down, making lists, planning how and when I can get something done. Quite often I purposely just make, similar to what Elena’s been doing recently on her blog –
www.a-n.co.uk/p/1322260/
Writing seems to be the most effective way for me to think through my work, to see what must be done and understand what it is I want to do (most of the time I don’t know myself). Sometimes this is a revelatory process. For instance, I worked out that the Stephen Fry project could be just one of many Heat re-enactments.
These are two photos from yesterday, more of just doing, instinctive making. The top image is an extension to the when I looked at the sky I saw wool project; colour – matched wool suspended in the sky. The photo below shows a handful of toy stuffing suspended with invisible thread, zoom in on the photo and you will spot it. This is what sunny days are for.
The Fear
Hoping to get onto the CargoCollective
http://cargocollective.com/
website for creatives… just as I was cooking up a page I realised I had only two completed projects. That ain’t good enough!
What an oversight. I’m working out how to finish up loose ends on a few pieces. I am the queen of the unfinished, maybe that’s my ‘thing’, leave my work unresolved like an ‘untitled’???? If I say it’s meant does that make it OK?
In quite an exciting place at the mo, planning projects, starting new ones, scouring the jobs and opps page. I haven’t entered any work for over a year (foolish girl).
Fear of failure has held me back for what seems like forever but a good mate of mine believes with his whole heart that you must take the fear on. Check out his blog, it’s like a sweety shop of creative yumminess;
http://blog.kinectricity.co/
Meanwhile I have chatted with a few creatives about the benefits of blogging, particularly on Artist Talking. It’s hard to take that initial leap, being all exposed and vunerable like a little lamby but well worth it. I hope they find the time and courage to share their work and thoughts.
