A creative process

Though much of my surface pattern design work involves a computer and software, I like the art work itself to start off in the normal way – by hand. 

For a while I’ve been interested to see how a Lino carving could translate to a pattern. And I also had a gap in my knowledge about how to put together pattern repeats. In particular I wanted to create a half drop pattern, which is very commonly used as it’s the most pleasing to the eye. 

So here’s how this particular process went:

The original drawing, inspired by a gorgeous little wren who visits my garden most evenings at dusk, he seems to especially like the clematis montana. 

 

And during carving, having been transferred to a block: 

And, after several hours at the computer huffing and puffing and generally getting cross, re-doing my calculations, I finally get a seamless matching repeat pattern.

What I love about this is how a single rectangle Lino block can give such movement and rhythm to a pattern. And I love the simplicity of white on Wedgwood blue. Monochromatic colour schemes have such impact I think. 

I actually did around 12 colour ways for this, but here are my favourites 

Generally I like more muted colours. Overly saturated colours look like they’re straight out of the tube (my pet peeve in painting). However, this yellow, so rich and bright and summery would make a lovely tea towel I think. 

I know how to party

This is what my Saturday night looks like. Except there is also a glorious pile of pattern design books to work through, and a glass of Prosecco to be drunk. 

I like having the weeks work assembled on my studio washing line wall. The sum of some of my efforts, good and bad, all waiting review. 

Enjoy your Saturday, folks. 

Friday florals

Over on Instagram I’m taking part in the 100 day project. 

Essentially you commit to something (anything, but it tends to be creative or nourishing in some way) for 100 days and post evidence of it. 
My project is 100 days of motifs. I thought this would tie in nicely with my surface pattern design work. I really wanted to establish the habit of drawing every day, and experimenting with what objects around me could be interesting motifs.  

Drawing every day is no hardship, I find I get tetchy if I can’t, and I’ve no shortage of motifs…but, they’re all flowers.  All of ’em! 

Whilst flora is clearly what I’m drawn to, I need to stretch myself and start using my eyes more to look for alternative motifs – ultimately I need a varied portfolio that shows I can be diverse in skills and vision.  Having said that, here’s today’s offering: 

Garden pickings in gouache.

Have a fabulous Friday folks and a great weekend. 

Hello. It’s me.

That Adele is a bit of down to earth fun, isn’t she?  I think so.  

So.  I am popping in to say howdy, it’s been a while.  The eagle eyed may see I made some changes to my header and logo, but woefully, apart from this lament, there have been no new posts from me since last year.  The crime of all crimes for a blog.  

Often I’ve had a blog post in me over the last year – I have 18 drafts saved of me waffling in various degrees.  My big dilemma was, and still is – can I maintain a blog?  I’m not a natural at this social media game.  I wax and wane in my desire to communicate, which is not very helpful when you want to build a presence on the internets.

So I return to my blog remembering the main reason for it in the first place: this space is for me to spill out and order my thicket of thoughts.  Often my brain is has far too many tabs open.  But in between the seconds of thinking and typing, this mush of randomness forms into something more coherent.

Now I’ve decided:  I may post once a week.  Or once a month. Or, it might be snippets on a daily basis, instagram style.  It may be things you can relate to. Occasionally even useful.  Occasionally even humorous.

The big question is – what the bloody hell have I been doing for the last year then?  Well, I’ll tell you: art making, some good, some bad, learning, reading, getting on with living and children and dogs and houses.  And, closing in on what art I like to make, which is simpler, and includes surface pattern design.  Unfortunately, I can’t post as much surface pattern design work as much as I’d like, for various copyright reasons, but I try and share what I can.

Also, I may go on about gardening a lot.

 

 

Simplicity of form

I love painting, but I do like to get back to drawing every now and then.  Painting for me tends to be more energetic, whereas yesterday, feeling under the weather, I felt fit only for sofa art.

I’ve also been exploring lino printing.  I bought some supplies for my son and I to do over the Easter holidays, thinking it might be something he’d like (he did, but not as much as me).

I really love the effects of lino printing, and I like being practical, so the idea appealed to me.  I’m also drawn (see what I did there) to having a sort of secondary art discipline.  Something different, yet related

Being a painter with an expressive approach, I really want to spend a bit of time and thought exploring how I might use lino printing.  I can’t readily see how my painting style will lend itself to lino printing.  And, more importantly –

What is it I want to say with lino printing I can’t say with paint?

So I’m just taking my time, trying to tap into the part of myself that has a desire to lino print, and see if I can hear what it has to say.

Perhaps something like this?

Contour drawing of freesias

 

Or this:

Contour drawing of garden flowers in my favourite jug

I didn’t set out with lino print in mind when I drew these – I just wanted a change of pace from painting, but I think they might work.  I actually even love them just as straight line drawings.

I don’t often do this type of drawing, I tend to get value involved too, but it was really quite meditative focusing purely on form, a bit like doing a dot to dot!  Remember those?

Blame it on the sunshine

Since I injured essential body parts required for painting, I’ve really tried hard to keep making art any way I could, otherwise, y’know, the creativity fairy will fly off and grace someone else with her presence.

So for the first couple of weeks, I carried on.  Then last week, summer arrived.  It really did.  And I just wanted to sit in my garden, catch some rays, and think about tomatoes and sweet peas and pester my husband to cut the grass.

And here’s a thing:  I enjoyed not making art.  I enjoyed not being on Instagram and Facebook and Pinterest.  I enjoyed not blogging.

Blogging for me is how I order the chaos within.  Time to reflect, sometimes about something, often about nothing.  Being in the garden, pottering around, planting up window boxes…those things sort of replaced blogging – but not you all, my blogging gang!

Honestly, I feel like I’ve had a holiday last week.  And yesterday I really had that Monday back to work feeling!  Anyway.  I’ve spent some time catching up on domestic bores chores and had a little tidy in my studio, which sets me up for the next phase, whatever that is.  I haven’t quite decided!  But I have just purchased some acrylic inks.

In other news – injuries have suddenly taken a huge leap of recovery!  Hooray for that.  And framing some original pieces is still happening.  In fact, one of my jobs today, apart from saying hello to all of you, is to test a various shades of white paint for the frames. I limited it to four, otherwise I thought I might go insane.

Now to spend some time catching up with my wordpress feed and seeing how all the daily painting is going!

this is as tidy at the studio gets

Artistic authenticity

Now, you know I’m a big fan of the Gram.

It’s to a great place to put your work out for the world to see.

What makes me kind of sad though, is when I see work out there of dubious origin.

I clicked on a post in my Instagram feed recently, thinking I’d missed a painting by one of my favourite artists. It certainly looked like her work, but it wasn’t.  When I say it looked like her work, I don’t mean I thought it looked like something she might paint: no, I thought she was reposting a previous painting.

Not only was this painting very similar (a landscape in oils), but the same person had also just posted work that looked almost identical to some new and very different work my favourite artist had recently released (abstract mixed media). Coincidence?

Looking further back through her feed, it wasn’t clear how she’d arrived at these paintings; not an evident evolving style, not a body of work. Just a few paintings early on that don’t appear to bear resemblance to their newer work.

Sometimes you do see artists with very similar aesthetics.  Usually there’ll be a particular series or point in time where their style will seem similar,  presumably in response to current trends. But there will be a solid body of work over a longer period of time that doesn’t resemble anyone’s art but their own, even if they are inspired and influenced by their favourite artists.

And my own Instagram feed does not tell the full story of my own artistic journey, because I tend to curate my feed, and I don’t want crap I painted two years ago hanging around.

But I do keep everything I painted. And my blog is a record of some of my process. It’s good to pull it all out sometimes and remember how far you’ve come.

I know that feeling, that longing to create good work, to get better. To be desperate to paint your vision.  I still feel that now!  When I was learning, I did copies of other artists work – and credited them properly.  There’s a couple of my Instagram feed, credited to David Atkins and Bob Rohm.

Studying and copying, yes, copying, are perfectly valid forms of learning, particularly for beginners.   Copying your favourite painting is brilliant for understanding decisions another artist made in terms of composition and colour.  Follow along tutorials are another form of copying, all great for getting you going.  And recently one of my IG friends (a brilliant painter) commented she was so frazzled she painted a study of one of her favourite artists,  so she could just paint and not worry about all the other stuff, so she could be soothed by the act of painting.  This is the beauty of art – that it can enrich people in ways other things can’t.

Then there is the baaaddd sort of copying.  Like the sort of thing I saw on Instagram, captioned not with “a study I did of blah blah blahs painting” , but just sort of passed off as their own with some trite ” just a little painting I did today!!!” in the comments.

There’s been a flurry of words around this on Instagram this week – check out Emily Jeffords, she puts this delicate issue across so well, not to berate people but to point out that in copying others, we deprive ourselves and our audience.

I agree.  And I also come back to this post I wrote a while ago after reading Ian Roberts.  No one can be original.  There is no such thing as originality – it’s all been done before.  But, authenticity.  That’s a different thing.

Authenticity does not come from being dazzled by what everyone else is doing on Instagram.  It is not to be found externally.

Authenticity comes from keeping records, journals, sketchbooks and observing.

It comes from making mistakes, exploring, playing, changing things up.

It comes from doing the work, not waiting for inspiration.

Authenticity comes from within. It is an internal process: listening to yourself.  Your fears, your hopes, your vulnerabilities. They will shape your art, along with your creative process. And this will give your work a truth that will shine through, and others will see what you see.  And you will be an artist.

 

Sketchbook materials

 

In March I took part in a Meet the Maker thread on Instagram.

I’m usually really particular about what sort of social media activities I participate in – many of them are dressed up as networking, but in fact just generate spam in your notifications.  I especially loathe anything that ends up becoming a sort of modern day chain letter affair – who the heck has time for all that?

Anyhow…..Meet the Maker is this neat idea where you are given a topic every day for a month, and you base your Instagram posts around it, with an accompanying photo.  The idea is that your followers gain more insight into you and your work.  I also like that you can pick and choose.  I did three or four I think, and one of them was “Sketchbook”.

And what better topic for a blog post too!

So.  I have a feeling I should probably use my sketchbooks more than I should, but I do what works for me.  Here’s my current kit:

It probably would help if I did an inventory:

Top:

• my Staedler Mars Technico mechanical pencil.  At the moment I have a HB lead in it, but I probably should change it for a 2B.  I tend to only use this for longer sketches at home.
• A black Pilot  G-Tec-C4.  This is a very fine liner, and I like how the ink flows
• A black Muji pen, 0.5 nib.  This flows very nicely too, gives a thicker line than the Pilot.
• my Platinum Carbon fountain pen – lovely fine nib, and once dry is waterproof.  Though I’m dismayed to find it now leaks.  Bummer.
• my Lamy safari pen with a fine nib which can be too thick for small sketches, particularly if I add a wash.  Ink and wash are my favourites.

These next three are in my pencil case but I not really into them – apart from they give a nice thick black for blocking in notan sketches. I bought them for practising modern calligraphy, but due to my lack of skill in this area, I’m not feeling it with them!  They have various line thickness. The buff coloured one is by Kuretake, the other two are Tombow calligraphy pens.

Next up I have:

• warm grey III
• cold grey III
• warm grey IV
• cold grey IV
• warm grey V
• cold grey VI

All Faber-Castell Pitt artist pen.  These are fantastic for quick blocking in of values, and mess free.

Bottom:

• this little Cotman watercolour travel palette is probably around 20 or so years old.  Though it’s probably had more use in the last year than the preceding 20!
• Two Pentel water brushes, one is medium, the other fine.  I cannot recommend these enough. You’d be surprised the amount of water in them goes a long way.
• this is almost brand new, a tin travel palette that cost far too much and is quite heavy, but I was swayed by the thumb ring on the underneath, which is brilliant for holding it. I filled it with gouache…though this hasn’t had as much use I as thought it would…

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And now for the sketchbooks:

These are the three main ones of the several I own.  At the top, this is my hard backed Moleskine watercolour – great shape, not too heavy.  Bottom left is my large Moleskine, which freaks out if you so much as show it a paint brush, then last is a ring bound A4 size hard backed sketchbook, which I don’t actually do any sketching in.  It’s my colour swatch book.

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It’s taken some practice and trial and error to have a sketchbook system that works for me.

If I’m out and about in town, for example, I use a very small Moleskine notebook (not pictured) and a Muji pen.  That’s generally always in my bag, and it’s what I pull out to sketch a doctors waiting room, or a coffee cup whilst waiting for a friend.

If I know I’m going somewhere I might want to sketch, with someone that might not mind me dithering about whilst I do it, I take the entire contents of my pencil case, and my hard backed water colour Moleskine.  Plus either the water colours or the gouache, paper towel and a spray bottle of water.

Along with the water brushes, this is the most efficient way for me to use water based paints – I just spritz the crusty old paint nuggets before I start, then use the water brush, occasionally dabbing it on the paper towel.  I’ve never run out of water this way, and it saves lugging a plastic bottle of water and jar around with you.   I’m not too precious about the quality of my work on these sketches – I like them loose and splashy and for me it’s just an chance to journal my otherwise ordinary (but happy!) life.  It’s also an opportunity to practice observation skills.

My studio sketchbook, the large Moleskine stays home.  I tend to use it for thumbnail sketches, painting ideas and longer drawings.

My colour swatch sketchbook is just that – it’s like a library of all the colour palettes I’ve used.  When I’m weary, and a little frayed round the edges, nothing soothes me more than taking three of four colours and seeing what I can mix up with them.    Though my work is very colourful, I like there to be a degree of harmony.  Using a limited palette achieves that.

So, being a curious sort, I’d love to know – what’s your sketching system?  Do you even have one?  What’s your favourite tools? I’m always ready for more supplies…..

A pair of purples

I can’t quite remember how this colour combination came about.  Blue is there, because, well, it’s blue, it’s my colour.  But the lilac?  Plus I’ve painted a few things since and remembering stuff like this is a distant memory.  Pahahahahaaa!  See what I did there?!

Anyhow, I’m really pleased this cute pair did come about.  One of the canvases was a wiper – I had painted something on it already but wiped it off as my eyes hated it.  But it left a sort of nice surface behind and the ghost of the painting what was there before, so it seemed like it might provide a nice place to start for something new, which it did.

Plus I used oil pastels, which are new to me (even though I’ve had them for ages but not know what to do with them)!  I really enjoyed laying down some very loose lines and texture with the pastels – some of it I left showing.  I found using the pastels in a linear way also provided a really strong structure to my composition.  I find that strange as when I draw, I don’t draw lines, I draw shapes.

But don’t you love it when you do something different and you learn something?  I really enjoyed painting these, I loved the process, and I love the results.

 

The road to Broadway

No, not that Broadway.

Broadway is a beautiful village on the other side of the Blackdown Hills from where I live.  I especially love the drive there – very rural and unspoiled with fabulous views.

The trouble is, I spend a lot of time trying to look at the view and getting car sick instead!  I like to drive as slowly as possible so I can take it all in, to try and imprint the essence of what I see. Often I’ll pull over to take photographs.

The flaw in this method of information gathering is of course being a total nuisance to other road users. Actually, what would really work for me is a tractor….I’d be able to see over the hedgerows as well as drive slow.