Sunday, September 30, 2007

Musings on creating art

Robert says that you should know how to draw/paint realistic figures and only then you can start with unrealistic ones. I don't agree.
I feel I want to express some thoughts and I need multiple colours and patterns in my picture. And it really doesn't matter to me whether the girl figure will be as perfect as the ancient Greek statutes or just a funny sketch - both have their plus points.
Maybe if I knew all the tricks of drawing people in a realistic way, it would be easier for me to transfer into the imaginary shapes. But it requires long hours of practicing, and I don't have that time.
All right, I have all the time in the world, but I don't have that patience. It's hard for me to concentrate on some boring tasks for longer, I always multitask, whatever I do. So just sitting and covering the pages with pictures of a hand seen from million different angles is not for me. Or should I make myself to practice? What do you think?

When I was buying the books for my journal pictures, the man talked to me about the music notes book I chose, and how lucky I am that I can find many notes for piano (as it was it), and his son plays trumpet and he cannot find any books with trumpet music... If only he knew what I was going to do with the book (=tear, cut into pieces, draw in it, paint all over it, ect)!... I smiled, said that I don't play the piano, paid and quickly vanished into the unknown... *^v^*


I've been thinking about the Moleskin notebook, it's soooooo fashionable and everybody wants it, and it's probably very convenient for an art journal (with its thick pages, contrary to my cheap exercise book I bought at the supermarket 'school-is-coming' stall, that curl every time I paint with watercolours on them, even with a thick layer of gesso, well... I didn't think it through...).
But I believe I'd be completely overwhelmed by its presence, especially when I see many very professional drawings in Moleskins all over the Web. I wouldn't place a single line in it, I'd just stare at it and pat the cover. ^^
Let's stick to less intimidating notebooks and canvases.

Talking about the canvases - I'm slightly mad, but I ordered a canvas and a bottle of an acrylic varnish. I'll be painting a birthday picture for my best friend Anna next week! *^v^*
Isn't it totally crazy of me? But I have everything planned, I pictured everything in my mind so I know exactly what I want to paint. I have some aids to be incorporated into the picture (like white lace or an Edgar Allan Poe's book of short stories!), and it'll be colourful, textured and beautiful!
That's the plan! *^v^*

For Helene - on my trip to Norway -> in 2004 we started in Sweden, Karlskrona, where we arrived in the evening and spend the night at the natur kemping. Then went up North through Vaxjo and Jonkoping to Uddevalla (we didn't spend any time there, just passing with one night at the camping) and across the border with Norway, to Moss and by ferry to Horten, where we stayed for a few days at the Viking market at Borre. In Horten I met a very nice old men at the post office, who placed a special stamp on my postcards so they could reach their destinations faster and not being thrown into the fjord straight away! (Yeah, I knew it was a joke and he was a real gentleman. *^v^*) Then we went to Oslo for a day and spent the night at the camp site nearby Oslo. And that's it, really, the next day we went back to Sweden and wandered a bit around on our way back to Karlskrona. Frankly speaking, we didn't visit much, but saw a lot of highways! ^^ It must be repeated more properly in the years to come!

7 comments:

  1. I have two tips to pass on to you that I learnt from Francis Pickering at a workshop.

    1. Make your own visual journal from professional grade decorators lining paper (stuff you put on walls and then paint) it will stand up to your water colours, ink, what ever you throw at it.

    or
    2. Buy your Moleskin then open random pages and paint them with watercolour washes, gesso, stamp them with your rubber stamps. Now the pages are no longer pristine and intimidating and you have a starting point for your art.

    Hope one or both of these work for you.

    CA

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  2. OK -- your art is YOURS - don't worry about realistic figures etc. Take it from someone who is not doing any art because I let people influence my view of what I saw. I envy your freedom with what you do and I admire all the work you have shown - it is full of life, joy, sometimes angst, and I would hate to see you change it at all.

    And watching your work on things is giving me hope that I could do it too. I just have to get rid of all the rules I was given by others.

    So basically sorry Robert I don't agree with you at all :D

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  3. I am amazed and totaly love your journal pages, they have a wonderful quality to them...The phrase aby kiszki marsz nie graly - I laughed! Mine do that all the time and I have to have some chocolate bar to quieten them down! lol..its a phrase my parents used, when I lived at home! I havent heard it for a long time now.

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  4. Basically I have never said that but no one is going to believe me here anyway... :-). But I said something similar. For me the most important thing in drawing/sketching/painting would be to be able to complete what I want to paint/draw in my head first and then to _be_able_ to put it on paper just as it is in my head. Not to be limited by my ability to draw something – be it realistic or not. For me that is real craftsmanship and I consider craftsmanship (even without art in it) as much more valuable than art without craftsmanship. This is why I would like to have time for mastering techniques first and this is what we talked about as I remember :-). But this does not mean I am not considering what my wife do as an art – oh no! The second part of our discussion were about when something becomes an art piece and I am sorry but IMHO there is no art if only I myself am considering what I have made as an art. It can be mine, original and there could be a piece of my soul in it, I could love it and I can admire myself for making it and I can feel a lot better after doing it etc. etc. etc. But it does not mean it is art. My conclusion from our discussion were that an art requires a viewer, or even better viewers who read some emotions from what wannabe-artist made. It does not have to be a genuine emotion of the art piece maker or the emotion she/he wanted to put in his piece – that would be great but it is not necessary. But it has to be some emotion strong enough to be remembered. And yes, I know this is far too imprecise for the proper definition but art is hard to defined even by specialists and I am but a mere IT geek :-). But nevertheless what my wife is doing is by my definition an art since there are more than one viewer who could read emotions from her works and who has been moved by them. Including me.

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  5. I know what you mean about moleskins being too perfect. I love working in really cheap blank books - I do tear out every third page so the binding does not pop. I also love buying old books and tearing them up for collage - reusing something feels right.

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  6. Love your pages - and your writing! And thanks for visiting my blog :)

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  7. Cool!
    I was at the market in Borre in 2004 too :)

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