My exploration of new techniques, materials and approaches has not been without its failures. Some works and ideas have fallen by the wayside, they just haven’t worked out. I think becoming a better artist is less about improving technique and more about improving decision making and becoming a better editor. It’s ok to have misadventures and mistakes as long as you can recognise that they are misadventures and mistakes. Talking of which, my little diversion into coloured pencils. What was I thinking of? I’m sure some artists can make good use of them, but I’m not one of them. This little nightmare was brought to you by myself and caran d’ache aquarelle artist’s colours. The results were the combination of a poor choice of subject matter and primary school techniques in pencilmanship. A neat, pretty and cheerful looking man smiling back at us telling us nothing. Way to go Katie.
My intentions of not showing every homeless person as desperate and without hope went a little astray with this one. Of course my intentions remain to show something approaching the breadth and depth of people out there in this situation, but I still have to be discerning in my choice of subject. Perhaps it may be that I have taken an interesting person and my treatment of him has taken that away, but in reality I think I was swayed by the shear appeal of the man’s face. Anyway I don’t think any approach, technique or medium could have solved a poor choice. While I’m being critical I’ve got to say I made things worse by my very neat colour within the lines approach to depicting the face I had chosen.
Then when you think things could not get any worse I introduced ink as an attempt to resuscitate a dying portrait. When attempts to revive the patient failed, I made the courageous decision to tear away the mid-tone in the face and the background to provide some point of interest and a flicker of life. Instead I was left with the flat lining artwork, it was here where I had to say my goodbyes and accept my defeat.
Sometimes you may have to leave what seemed a good idea alone. Move on and learn from your mistakes. From the beginning my first mistake was the face and expression I had chosen and then perhaps my treatment of it lacked visual and psychological depth. I am however glad that I had chosen to experiment with this medium if only to rule it out for the immediate future. My technical ability at this point in time with colouring pencils is simply too limited. For me this medium does not have the texture, strength and power of the more robust materials I have been using.
Again I don’t want to portray every homeless person in a stereotypical dishevelled and ragged appearance as this is just not the reality, but I’ve got to say that here my technique also let me down. Looking on the bright side I recognised a work that was a loser and decided to cut my losses and share them with you.
