Hey, brain, please SHUT UP!

Drawing day forty-two

Drawing day forty-three

The ideas-generating portion of my brain seems to have slipped into overdrive and is coming up with ideas almost faster than I can write them down. While I was completing yesterday's drawing (late in the evening whilst watching the footie on tv), thoughts on what I could do with it kept floating to the top of my mind: screenprints on cards/clothing/fabric, sculptures using boxes and wire as found objects, then their title(s) popped into my head. They're imps so each with have a name like IMPasto, IMPortant, IMPressed, IMPeril. Then I couldn't stop thinking about all the words starting with "imp-", on and on! I had to go fetch a pencil and visual diary to put beside the bed just in case I started awake in the middle of the night with an idea that would disappear with my snores if I didn't write it down :) (which has happened, and recently).

Not complaining, though - I have enough ideas to work on for a couple of lifetimes, and there are more coming.

Second excursion for the week - tired!

Drawing day forty

Drawing day forty-one

We had another class excursion yesterday, this time into the National Gallery of Victoria International and some small galleries in Flinders Lane, to research our current painting project: found objects. Saw some amazing work, which set up such a set of ripples in my brain that I woke at 6am (most unlike me and neither pleasant nor welcome since I was so wide awake there was no chance of dozing off again) with three ideas in my head that I had to write down before I forgot them (to do with screenprinting text onto fabric and using it to make one of my drawings-a-day into a soft sculpture).

With the unexpectedly early start, I'd made today's drawing by 8.15am and had to time to reflect on what I'd need for painting class today (as opposed to the usual mad rush as I recall all the things I've forgotten to prepare the previous evening). Painting is a misnomer this year, as we can use that class for sculpture or photography or pretty much whatever takes our fancy (not printmaking so much, as we have that all day Wednesday). I'm mostly planning to work on sculpture, and there is no shortage of existing found objects in my house already. But did I use them? No, 'course not! I decided I wanted to disassemble soft toys and use the carcasses to make a "dress", using the larger pieces of pelt to patch together for the body of the garment, with feet and tails adorning the hemline and perhaps some sort of stole affair to utilise the heads and accessories. I'm using mostly pastel creatures, playing on a lost innocence theme. I think I'll line it in scarlet.

I scored a bonanza at St Vinnies op shop earlier this week, when I found two GINORMOUS sacks of soft toys for a mere $3 per sack - so ginormous that they stand chest high on me. Those things were heavy, I almost gave myself a hernia dragging them up the street to the car, heaving one into the boot and the other into the back seat (they were too big to both fit in the boot!). I took this as a sign from the Powers-That-Be that I was meant to do this project :)

The reactions of others to this work-in-progress is veeeee-ry interesting, ranging from horror and disbelief as I wield the scissors and behead, gut and disect teddy bears and bunnies (and a Snoopy!), to evil laughter.

I have two more definite found object works in mind, one involving bread tags and the other small cardboard boxes and Alice-through-the-looking-glass. I am having fun (wicked grin)

Drawing day thirty-nine - still going!

Excursion

Drawing day thirty-seven

Kind of a found poem piece. If you can't read the print, it says:

The thought
of
his scheme
was gathering
the flames

Drawing day thirty-eight

Instead of two lecture classes today, we went on an excursion to the bayside suburb of St Kilda to the Linden Gallery to see their Postcard Show. The title of the exhibition is a bit misleading: the works are not postcard size, but six are selected to be made into postcards to sell to raise funds for the gallery. There is a limit on size (30cm x 30cm x 30cm) but it's not juried, everyone who enters has their work hung (there is an entry fee - it's the gallery's main annual fundraiser).
Perhaps I'll enter next time...

The sheer volume of works was mind boggling, with pieces hung almost from floor to ceiling in four rooms, plus sculpture on every surface. Some wonderful, some inspiring, some not so great. Every time I re-entered a space, I'd see something new, something I'd missed the first time (or the second, or third!). Gave me LOTS of ideas :)

Collage

Drawing day thirty-six

I've been working, on and off, at a collage drawing. I've been doing these since the 70s (!!!) in one form or another, I like to do one now and then just because they're fun :)

Collage before

I begin with a magazine photo, usually of a face. I've been trying a full figure one this week, too, but I'm not sure if it's really going to work.

Collage during

Then I cut it up, this time into uneven strips. Sometimes I cut it into wavy strips, or little squares, or whatever else strikes my fancy.

Collage after

Then I draw over and around, through and beside, joining up some of the disconnected lines of the face, adding others, sometimes using what I've come to think of as my trademark crosshatching in the wavy shapes. Mostly I use black, some red, sometimes a little blue. Draw till it looks done :)

Drawing day thirty-five

Drawing day thirty-five

Too pooped to post

Drawing day thirty-two

Drawing day thirty-three

Drawing day thirty-four

I've been drawing but time has been at a premium since school started up again - I suspected the frequency of posting would decline as classes occupied me :)

Woo, tiring going back! I hate the alarm clock, I hate getting out of bed, but once I'm up I'm rarin' to go. We haven't done very much practical hands on work this week, mostly talking about expectations for this first semester, and setting up administrative stuff. Except for painting today, when we actually got the paint brushes out and applied paint to paper.

On portraits, ugh. Of each other. I loathed painting self portraits last year (I think I'll burn mine and mix the ashes into paint to use on something else!) and portraits of the class aren't much better. Have I mentioned I suck at painting? Oh, and have I also mentioned how much I dislike painting? We did some preliminary drawings then worked up a portrait including aspects of the drawings we liked. I liked the chunkiness of my pastel drawing using tone but no line, so tried to replicate that in paint.

Ew. I swear, I whined and bitched and wandered disconsolately about the studio for an hour, trying to get inspiration from what everone else was doing, in between bouts of daubing half-heartedly at my own painting. The brush wouldn't do what I wanted (as I moaned and groaned endlessly), so Tony (the teacher) slapped a palette knife in my hand and forced me back to work. Yuck, didn't like that either, the paint just sat there in big boring slabs no matter how much I poked at it.

Finally I lost my temper with it. I dragged out my ginormous housepainting brush, stabbed it into the paint and went a bit Rolf Harris on the portrait. Slash. Slash, slash, stab, slice. Swoop, slash, slosh the brush brutally around in the water jar and dash in some washy shadows. Stab and slash at it a bit more. Ten minutes and I was done.

I stood back and looked at it. Hmmm, I think I like it. Yes. It works. I do like it!

Apparently all I needed to do was get angry with the paint and treat it mean :)