Creative Resolutions

I don't normally make new Year resolutions, but this year I have decided to make some creative ones. Over the past year or so, I have increasingly been trying to find my creative roots again, but although I have I think made some progress, I've been quite frustrated at the lack of time to really get stuck in - it just feels like I'm dabbling the whole time. With this in mind I recently bought myself a new book: Creative Time and Space: Making Room for Making Art

Again, I don't usually buy art books of this kind - you could spend your whole life thinking about art without actually producing anything.  There's a lot of navel gazing going on amongst artists, and although I'm probably guilty of it too, I try not to over-indulge. Sometimes I think a lot of creative people are just in love with the idea of being creative, and think about 'being creative' a lot more than actually being creative, so I try to avoid that.  Anyway, the title seemed to hit the nail on the head for me, and although having read it, it's not rocket science, and is mainly common sense, it has at least spurred me on to try and make a few changes this year.

So my creative resolutions for 2011 are:

• To sort out a more effective 'studio' space.  For the last 2 months, our office/studio/gym has looked like a bomb has hit it. You can barely enter the room let alone do any work in there, as it has become a dumping ground for the rest of the house. My aim is to sort this out as soon as possible. Get some hard flooring put down (I've already trashed the carpet, so hard flooring where I can easily clean up is a necessity). Get rid of all unneccessary junk, put up lots of shelving, paint the walls white, and see if I can get hold of a plan chest.
• To organise my creative time a little more effectively.
• To go on the occasional course - for example I've recently discovered that there is a print workshop locally that runs short courses, and where you can use their facilities really cheaply if you are a member.  I've always loved prints, and would like to explore that a little more, so a short course might spur me on.
• To look at actually producing some personal work for sale again, rather than just playing and experimenting.
• To approach some galleries.
• I got an iPad as my Christmas present this year and I'm really keen to learn to use this to produce artwork 'on the go'.
• To get back into the discipline of sketching and drawing more.

Not quite sure how much of this I'll achieve, but my younger son starts school in the autumn, so hopefully I should have a little more time by then at least.

After the Feast comes the Famine

Following on from my recent fever of creativity, everything has come to a grinding halt as family life, Christmas and business gets in the way. It's all deeply frustrating, there's so many things I want to get on with, to try out, experiment with, and I've got lots of half finished projects around that I'm longing to finish. Maybe I'll get some more time after Christmas, but in the meantime I thought I'd post a few of the journal pages I created just to remind myself that I have achieved something, and as an inspiration to do more....

 

You may notice that they all have the common theme of 'trees'.  This wasn't planned at first, but my first pages all happened to feature trees in some way, so it has now become the theme of my first journal.  Only a few pages left now.  I quite like the idea of each one having a theme, so I might give the next one a theme too...

Is Meaning Important?

I've been thinking about this question a lot recently.  I've come across a couple of instances where an artist has said that the meaning of their artwork is not important - they have chosen to eschew any artist's statement, because they feel their artwork should stand on it's own two feet, that it's visual appearance is what it is all about, and that it has no intellectual meaning.  Any meaning ascribed to it by themselves as the artist they argue, will inevitably be personal and is therefore irrelevant to it's consumption. 

Something else that I read in a forum recently, speculated on why it was that the artist's statement which often accompanies an artwork, is frequently poorly written,  using the most obscure and language possible, so that it is difficult to extract meaning from it  - turning off all but the most committed art lover, and certainly making it inaccessible to anyone without a good education.  Some of the reasons suggested for why this is were:

• Artists are not writers - they do not deal with the written word, their language is visual, and there is no real reason why they should be expected to be skilful with the written word as well, though some will be. It is also particularly challenging to communicate complex and often abstract concepts.
• Other artists are doing it, so most artists feel that they should too.
• Art departments in colleges and universities feel somewhat insecure about the academic rigour of their subject, and feel the need to compensate by making sure that their artwork deals with complex concepts, making it as difficult to understand as possible.  I know from my own experience that there may be a certain amount of truth in this, certainly Fine Art was never taken that seriously as an academic subject by my fellow students who were studying the sciences.
• Arguably, meaning is what distinguishes Fine Art from the 'merely' decorative. However it is a distinction which I think is often somewhat elitist.  The boundaries between the Applied, Decorative and Fine Arts are often blurred, and I hate the whole idea that one form of art is somehow less 'worthy' than another.

From my own point of view, overt 'meaning', has never seemed that important for my own artwork - what inspires me are the visual qualities along perhaps with some intangible ones such as atmosphere, and while some conceptual art does appeal to me, it's normally the kind which has a strong visual element as well. Does that make my art superficial? Or is that apparent superficiality actually superficial?  Does it really matter? 

Having said all this, it is perhaps impossible to create a piece of artwork without any meaning, though the meaning it has for an observer may be very different to that of the artist who produces it.  Even if the artist does not consciously intend their artwork to have meaning, it's production will be the result of unconscious thoughts, experiences and influences. 

Maybe my feelings about this will change - I was reading about another artist recently for whom meaning is much more important in his artwork now than it originally was, even though for me as an observer, the meaning that he ascribes to it doesn't add anything.  There are other cases I can think of though, when understanding the background to a piece of artwork has made my experience of it much richer, giving it additional 'depth'.

I suppose what I object to is the idea that to be taken seriously, a piece of art has to have a deep intellectual basis.  No-one should feel obliged or pressured to force meaning on something that perhaps isn't really there, just as an artist should have equal freedom to impart personal meaning to their work if they wish to.  After all,  artists work in very different ways, for some the practice of art is almost a kind of therapy, or form of meditation, a way of working through issues in their life. Others use art to express their opinions or feelings about something happening in the world, bringing attention to an issue, or creating a fresh perspective and different way of seeing.  Art is also very personal - and that's the beauty and attraction of it both for practitioners and users. At the end of the day though, for me, the best artwork is able to stand on it's own merits without needing any 'translation' or 'interpretation' by the artist in order for it to be appreciated.

Abstract Sparklers

I took this photo on Bonfire Night using a tripod and the 'Firework' setting on my camera.  It's the first time I've attempted anything like it, and I love the result, so I thought I'd share it here.  I also couldn't resist messing about with the colour in photoshop!

Getting it Right

I'm currently going through a 'driven' phase with my artwork.   It's rare that I get so badly addicted. It's rather like when I'm reading a good book that I can't put down, so that every spare moment I get is devoted to reading, only on this occasion its artwork.  Our kitchen has now been taken over by painting paraphernalia so that I can paint for 10 minutes in the middle of preparing a meal, or whenever, it's got that bad.

It all started when I decided to just mess about and have a go at producing some decorative papers.  It helps that I have a really inspirational book devoted to the subject, which gave a starting point, but it was an excuse really to play with paint and different media, purely for the love of it.  From there I moved on to decorating or painting an old book I had.  I've long been a fan of artists books or journals, and of altered art in general, but have never really successfully got to grips with them myself.  But this book has now become my 'trying out new ideas for the fun of it' book, sort of like a sketchbook, but also something of a sampler, for different techniques as well as ideas.  Because it is just somewhere to try out ideas and have fun, I'm not getting too hung up about it, and am letting myself go a bit more.  It doesn't matter if it's not very good, because it's the learning that counts.  This is something of a release for me, in spite of the fact that I have always instinctively believed that there is no right or wrong in art, and that it is mine so I can do what I like with it (somewhat self indulgent, but then I think a lot of art is fundamentally self-indulgent by its nature).

However, doing what you want can require strength of character, particularly if you have the kind of personality that seeks approval all the time, and especially if what you want to do is not especially 'fashionable' or is different to what others are doing.  Again, personally I think that different is good, in fact I often feel that if what I produce isn't different, then it's not good enough because it should be, but it wasn't something that my formal art training really encouraged, where instead we were under some pressure to work in whatever style of art was in vogue at the time.  I also suffer from feelings of guilt when I am doing something that is purely (from my own point of view) for enjoyment - where does that come from?

All this is I find very inhibiting - that internal dialogue about what I should be doing -  so anything which allows me to put that to one side feels like a huge release.  Maybe I'll develop some of the ideas a little further at some stage, maybe I won't - it doesn't really matter, but at the moment I'm very happy to be experimenting, learning and having fun.  Hopefully, I'll be able to share some of it in due course - if I can prise myself away from creating long enough to take photos.

Just experimenting...

I've not been here for a while - life's just been getting in the way unfortunately.  Compared to the time I had when I was young, free and single (and more to the point without kids) I have so little time to be creative now, and quite often even when I manage to make the time, I end up feeling a little guilty, because there's always something else that I feel I should be doing instead (usually housework or other chores).

Still, over the last couple of weeks, I've managed to exhibit my landscape drawing at the local arts festival, dropped off my miniature building for the Crafty City project, and sold a couple more paintings online.  I also found the time to experiment a little more with some cyanotypes.

Those of you who also read Artful Adventures may start to notice a pattern forming here - I will do an activity with the kids (usually one that especially appeals to me) and as I'm working with them I begin to see all the potential and possibilities that the activity offers, with further inspiration being provided by what the kids themselves are doing with it.  I am then fired with enthusiasm to further experiment with the activity by myself, and see where it leads me as soon as I have the opportunity. So I originally tried this activity with my boys (you can read about it here).  They really enjoyed it, but I suspect I enjoyed it even more.

The lack of sunny days meant that my opportunity to experiment with it further was somewhat limited.  But I still had quite a stack of paper left and lots of ideas, so as soon as the weather allowed I dug it out and had a go by myself.  I now want to get hold of some of the specially treated larger sheets of watercolour style paper you can get so that I can create some larger images - I quite fancy having a try doing some mixed media compositions with these.  I have no absolutely no ambitions to work with negatives  - what appeals to me about this technique is directly taking an object, such as some lace or plant material, creating an image from it, and then adding to the print in some way to create something unique.  However unless we have a particularly sunny winter I suspect it may be next year before I get round to that.  In the meantime I can perhaps make use of some of the experimental prints....

Little House, Big City

A few weeks ago, I heard about a project which Manchester Craft Mafia were organising, to create a miniature city, with lots of little buildings contributed by members of the public.  This captured my imagination, as I have always had a thing for little houses.  It's also being created in my home city, so I thought I'd join in and add my own contribution. The project was described as follows:

The 'Crafty City' is a project that is very close to the heart of the Manchester Craft Mafia. We wanted to do something big that would grab people’s attention and get them involved. Taking inspiration from Anthony Gormley’s ‘Field for the British Isles’ and as our mission is to promote craft and creativity throughout Manchester and beyond, we came up with the idea of making a Crafty City, a Mini Manchester, a Not So Big Up North.

The ‘Crafty City’ is a project for everyone. For crafters and non-crafters, for people living in Manchester or further afield in the UK and if possible people from overseas. Creativity is everywhere and in everyone, and we would like to encourage it out by providing the chance to contribute, share and make.

Manchester Craft Mafia are inviting as many people to create a little building using any art material or method. The only restriction being the size and we hope the ‘Crafty City’ will grow and develop. Our city started on Thursday 19th August 2010 during MCM's re-launch night with about thirty seven mini buildings and MCM hope it will grow from a village, into a town and then into a large ‘Crafty City’. We hope this will reflect the history of how Manchester grew from a little camp to what it is today, a large and very busy city. It will pop-up at both of our Summer and Christmas Fairs and we aim to ‘show and tell’ about each and every building on our website. Our final goal is to exhibit the ‘Crafty City’ throughout 2011.

After some thought, I made the decision to tackle my building with papier mache pulp, since this is generally quite light and robust.  It's not something I've used before, though I've always admired projects made with it, and because I thought I might like to make a few projects of my own with it in future, I bought a large bag.  The base of the model was formed by half of a large juice carton, which dictated the gable on the roof.  But I didn't really plan the style of the building at all, it just 'appeared' all by itself it seemed, as a traditional 19th century house.  It's been another labour of love for me, which I now have to get to the organisers of the exhibition, along with another 2 buildings created by my boys.

Apparently submissions can be made up until about Christmas I think.  I'm really looking forward to seeing the exhibition next year, and seeing if I can spot my little house in the big city.

Bikes and Boats

I said I'd share the result of any tweaking I did to the photo I posted a couple of weeks ago for the Gallery.  As I said at the time, I felt that this photograph, which I took very quickly while on our recent holiday in Cornwall, had some potential, so I've spent a bit of time experimenting with it in Photoshop.  It's been somewhat frustrating really, because I have a strong image in my mind of what I'm trying to achieve, but my Photoshop skills are still fairly rudimentary, which means I haven't always been able to achieve completely what I wanted.  Still, I've learned a bit more from it, and I produced 2 alternatives, both of which I like, but in different ways.  The first photo is the original photograph before I did anything with it.

For the following photo, I turned it into a black and white image.  I also removed the yellow lines from the road which I thought were a little obtrusive, and applied a lighting effect to focus on the bikes a little more.

For the final image, I performed the same operations as I did for the black and white version, only this time I just faded the colour a little, while increasing the saturation on part of the bikes to draw more attention to them.

I think my favourite is the black and white image - I might even print and frame that one.

Finished Drawing

Well this is it - the first full-scale drawing I've finished in a long, long time.  It's difficult to get a sense of what it looks like here - as the original size is 91x61cms, but I will be producing prints from it of about half that size, partly because I feel it benefits from being a little 'tighter' and partly for purely commercial reasons, in that smaller prints tend to sell better.  Once the original was framed it would be very large, and it's more difficult for most people to find space in their home for something that size. You can see the original view which I produced the first sketches from here.  I have to say that this photograph is not entirely accurate, especially as it seems to have lost a little of its colour, but even so you can see that my version is much darker and more moody, bearing little resemblance to the original really. There's artistic licence for you - I always seem to produce drawings that way. Strangely it reminds me of something else in terms of it's 'feel' - possibly early 19th century german romantic art, maybe Samuel Palmer, or even an early Renaissance landscape. I'm not sure which.  However not of that was intentional - though I did specialise in studying landscape art of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, so maybe there's some subconscious influence there.

I worked the drawing up in charcoal, pastel, conte and wax crayons first, before photographing, uploading and digitally colouring it (not that you can really see the colour in these images).  I love the flexibility that this gives me to experiment to my heart's content, without fear of destroying what I've done so far. You could say it's my digital 'safety net', but in fact it's more than just that, and I'm keen to explore the interaction between digital and traditional art forms further, rather than simply using it as a tool to produce the 'perfect' image.

I needed to get this one finished, because I'm supposed to be taking part in an exhibition for our local Arts Festival at the end of September, and time is running out. I will be producing it as a limited edition print, so now I've got to try and make sure I print it out accurately.  Sometimes I find  this is the hardest part of the whole process!

My Latest Creative 'Kit'

Well it's arrived - I promised myself I'd buy a proper easel so I could work on my large drawings more easily.  I've never had one before, and it was an extravagance, but I raided my piggy bank to order it.  After all, if I want to seriously get back into my artwork, then I need the tools to do it, and my previous working practices just ended in disaster.  In order to avoid future damage to the carpet, it's currently based in the kitchen, where charcoal and pastel dust can be easily swept away.  I won't be leaving it there permanently, but because it's on castors to push it out of the way, and can also be folded for storage, I can remove it fairly easily when I'm not using it.  Just as well really, as the kids are already trying to use it as a climbing frame! The one I chose in the end was a Winsor and Newton Welland Studio Easel - a large and sturdy affair which I thought would suit my needs well.  It came ready assembled so it was easy to set up.  I'm very pleased with it so far, and have already used it to finish off my latest drawing, which I'll reveal in my next post!

The Gallery: A Photo I hope to be Proud of

As the Gallery is quite a creative thing to take part in, I thought that I'd take part in it this time via my new blog, especially since part of the reason I set it up was to be able to indulge myself by doing more of this sort of thing.  When I saw the prompt for this week's Gallery, I thought that it would be quite easy, but actually I've found it wasn't.  I'm not a prolific photographer these days.  I used to be quite keen, to the extent that in pre-digital days I had my own darkroom, but that was a long time ago.  However with all the inspiring photographs I see on other people's blogs, I'd love to have a go again.  I also recently picked up a bargain book called 99 Digital PhotoART Ideas: Create Your Own Art for Your Walls by Annabel Williams, which really inspired me - lots of ideas for taking photographs as artwork, and encouraging you to take more control of your camera - something I've not done with my digital SLR - partly because I've been too lazy, and partly because I've not read the manual properly!  I quite fancy getting one or two more lenses, but having seen the price of the ones I want, I think they'll have to go on the wish list for a while.

Anyway, I took a look at what I'd got, and most of the photos which I'm proud of, I felt I could take no credit for.  The scene itself was beautiful, the effect I'd achieved was entirely accidental, or my kids looked particularly cute in that shot, but it was nothing to do with me.  Now I don't suppose that really matters, you can be proud of a photo for any reason you like, but I wanted something I felt I could take some credit for.  In the end, I chose this one which I took on our recent holiday to Cornwall (our first proper holiday for 7 years).  I've not done anything with it yet, but I feel it has great potential, and that I can take some credit for the composition, if nothing else!  One of the first priorities will  be to get rid of the yellow lines, which I feel are far too intrusive.  I'd also like to see what it looks like in black and white.  Although the purist in me feels that digitally editing photos is in some way 'cheating' I know that these days, it's a rare photo that hasn't been edited, and lets face it, plenty of image manipulation used to go on in the darkroom anyway!  Perehaps when I get round to doing something with it, I'll post the finished result so you can see the difference.

Doodle Travel Journal

So, what have I been up to this week?  Well I have a sense of achievement because I finally completed my Travel Journal from our holiday last month.  This was very much an organic process - I started it without any real preconceived idea of what the finished thing would be like, and as I've worked on it, I've had new ideas which have been added and incorporated.  It's been a real labour of love, and I think it's probably unlikely that I'll do it for every holiday, but I've gained a great deal of satisfaction from it.  It'll be great to look back on in the future.  I love spontaneous doodles, and the one rule I set myself when creating this was that I was not allowed to plan the composition in any way, or to use pencil and rubber first.  I had to use ink straight onto paper - this was a little scary.  Of course the finished drawings are as a result much more rough and ready than they would otherwise be, you can see the errors, and there are things I would have done differently if I could have started again, but it has a lot more life and character than something which was completely planned would have done, and that was important to me - it was meant to be less a work of art, and more a personal document.  I found I particularly enjoyed using the white pen on black paper, and I generally restricted myself to black and white - for some reason I'm always happier working in monotone - not sure entirely why that is, but I always put it down to when I was doing my Art A-level, and I was required to do a finished drawing (still-life) every week for 2 years.

Having completed this project, I'm now wondering whether to do the same thing for our wedding album.  We don't actually have an album, just a pile of photos in a box somewhere, because I was always intending to make my own, and never actually got round to it.  But I rather like the idea of taking such a personal approach to creating a wedding album.  That really would be a labour of love (sorry, corny I know!)

Thoughts about Inspiration and Influence

On my travels around the web, I come across lots of creative work which inspires and influences me, but this always worries me slightly.  While I love to look at and admire the work of others, I want my own ideas and work to be as original as possible - truly my own, and I'm always worried that if I spend too much time looking at what others are doing, my own work will be influenced more than I would like.  Now I know that this is ridiculous.  No man is an island, and nobody's work can ever be 100% completely and utterly original - it will always build upon what they see around them.  Even the greatest artists are influenced by the work of their forbears and contemporaries to greater or lesser extent, and it informs and helps develop and improve their work.  So I should be able to do the same.  But where does admiration or inspiration end, and copying begin? Sometimes it can be a fine line.  For me, influence is about perhaps taking an element of someone else's work, and using it to change and develop your own - that element will itself, simply by being placed in a different context, change, develop further and look different, especially as time goes on.  Sometimes it is just a matter of experimenting with a new technique, a technique which you may find you love and adopt wholeheartedly, or one which you may ultimately discard, but which will have led you on a new journey, learning new things along the way.  At other times it may be just a colour combination.  I suppose as long as the influence is just a starting point for creating something new it shouldn't be a problem.  Copying the art of the great masters for example has long been acknowledged as a valid way of learning about the practice of art.  Even though I know that all this is natural and good, I still feel guilty if I am inspired to try something that someone else has done first.  It even concerns me sometimes that I may start subconsciously copying someone else's work, something that I've seen and admired, but forgotten about.  Perhaps I'm a little paranoid about it, but I'm going to have to get over it because otherwise I'll never do anything!

Promise and Potential - A New Sketchbook

I've just been extravagant and bought myself this new sketchbook. Entitled 'One Sketch a Day - a Visual Journal', the blurb on the back reads as follows:

The pages of this keepsake sketchbook feature a space to draw any and anything that catches your eye each day trhoughout the year.  As you fill the pages with sketches, you'll see the evolution and ryhthm of your thoughts and drawings.  Whether you're an art student, a long-time sketcher, or the next great master, this journal will accompany you in your artistic journey, keeping a lasting record of your work and imagination that you can revisit any time.

Well reading this inspired me - admittedly the space for each drawing isn't large, but I suppose the book would have to be a great deal thicker if it was.  But I tend to have a problem with beautiful sketchbooks - I've been given one or two over the years, and from time to time I pull them out and fondle them, admiring the purity and potential of their blank pages, and then put them away again.  But this defeats the whole object - sketchbooks are meant to be filled, and I don't like to 'spoil' them - how ridiculous is that? I thought the 'discipline' of a sketch each day might spur me on - (of course because of that I have delayed starting it - but I WILL start it this week).

It's funny, in the deep and distant past, I always used to take my sketchbook with me a lot, but over the years I got out of the habit, and my sketching skills are now very rusty, which in turn makes me much more inhibited about drawing.  I'm fine as long as I know I can re-do it easily and work on a drawing, but anything more spontaneous I struggle with.  I'm trying to find the time therefore to doodle and sketch a little more spontaneously, and be less self-conscious about it all.  I even optimistically took my sketchbook on holiday a few weeks ago.  I say optimistically, because it didn't really work out.  The kids weren't willing to let me get on with it, and I kept on seeing things I'd have loved to sketch and couldn't which was just frustrating.  Taking a photo just isn't the same thing.  Still I did start a visual doodled travel journal there for the first time - I'm still working on it, so all will be revealed when it's finished.

Creative/destructive Time

I promised myself that this week, during my 3 precious child-free mornings, I would start some work on a drawing I've been meaning to do.  Back in early May I made the supreme effort to find the time to go out and do some sketching at Alderley Edge, a local beauty spot.  Those drawings and photographs have been sitting unused ever since, but having had my work accepted to take part in the local Arts Festival in late September, I really needed to start producing something.  Apart from having a single drawing for sale in a gallery north of Manchester, I have not exhibited my personal work since my degree show.

However, all was not plain sailing.  Day 1, I set about finding the equipment I needed, and hit my first problem - I couldn't find my drawing materials.  Not that I had many, it occured to me that somewhat shockingly I haven't bought any since I graduated (a very long time ago), so in fact had very few left.  I decided I just about had time to go and buy some, so that was what I did.

The next day, I set everything up on my drawing board - but I'd been using it as a cutting board too, and discovered it now has ridges in it as a result, so I covered it with lining paper first, and set it up on my light sketching easel (the only one I have) in the office/studio/gym to draw.  It was not ideal - the paper (and lining paper) wouldn't lie flat because it had been cut from a roll, and the easel was too light to work on, given that my drawing was so large.  My reference material, sketches and photographs were incoveniently placed on a table by me, where I couldn't easily see them.  Still, I ploughed on, until 10 or 15 minutes later, I realised with dawning horror that there was rather a lot of charcoal dust being created, and I had failed to protect the carpet.  I looked down with apprehension to see a nice black line on the recently cleaned carpet beneath the easel.  Not to worry I thought optimistically, it will hoover up if I don't walk on it, and duly went and fetched the vacuum cleaner.  It didn't.  Or rather the dust disappeared, leaving a big black stain behind it.  I spent the rest of my 'creative' time, unsuccessfully trying to clean the carpet.  The next time we have a house viewing (we're currently trying to sell up) the office chair will have to be strategically placed - at least until the carpet can be professionally cleaned - again.

With just one child free morning left for me to work on my drawing, I decided the next day to work in the kitchen (no carpet to damage) and attach the drawing to the wall, again on top of a sheet of lining paper to protect the paintwork, with my reference material placed conveniently alongside. This turned out to be equally unsuccessful.  The paper kept on detaching itself from the wall and slipping, it still wouldn't lie flat, and my attempts to keep it on the wall left horrible dirty fingerprints on the recently re-decorated surface.  Not to worry I thought, they'll wipe off.  It's quite astonishing how difficult it is, I discovered, to wipe away charcoal and dirty blu-tack marks from a paintwork -  it did come off if I scrubbed, but so did the paint.

So now I'm left with a carpet that needs cleaning, and a wall that needs re-touching.  My drawing is still only two-thirds finished, but I have decided to invest in a large piece of MDF as a new drawing board, which means I won't need to line it, and a proper easel - something which I've never had, and which will create yet more clutter in the office/studio/gym, but I think is desperately needed.  Just need to work out how I can afford it!

I shall try and finish the drawing next week on my new drawing board, but hopefully I will have learned enough this time not to trash the house in the process, and at least I have actually made a start.

First Post

I thought it was about time I made a start on this blog.  For a while now as I've been browsing around other people's blogs - especially creative ones, I've been feeling a little jealous - there are so many projects to take part in, so many ideas to share and experiment with, and I've felt a little left out.  My 'main' blog (Artful Adventures) was really intended to be a business blog - I think it's moved a bit beyond that, and although I do love that blog, it's dedicated to children's art, and is not the place to share my own stuff, so I wanted a my own space for that purpose.  I wanted somewhere to share and record all the wonderful inspirational things I came across, and yes, to indulge myself a little.

Not that I get the time to do a lot of my own work, more's the pity.  I spend a lot of my time being creatively frustrated, as I have lots and lots of ideas and no time to do them all.  I've not really spent a lot of time doing artwork since I left University, and I feel I need the time to experiment, to develop my own style, not just by dabbling, but spending some real quality time absorbed in the studio.  What  studio?  Well I don't really have one - we just have a room that is office, studio and part-time fitness space - you can imagine the chaos - 3 mutually incompatible activities in one not terribly big room!  It is a dream of mine to have my own special space one day.

Of course it's not just artwork - ever since I can remember I've had a wider interest in crafts in general - there's so much I want to try my hand at.  I've always been particularly interested in art, textiles, papercrafts, jewellery, and glass.  But life is just too short to try all of these properly.  Sometimes I think I should forget about trying to become any good at just one and have fun instead.

I was intrigued to see that I'd somehow managed to pick up a follower before I'd even put a single post on here - that was certainly a leap of faith!  Let's just hope I can live up to it.  I'm not sure how often I'll be able to add to this blog - I suspect that at first I'll struggle to contribute to it really frequently, just as I struggle to get the time to do my own creative work.   But setting up this blog really is a statement of intent, and I'm intending therefore over the next day or two to try and indulge myself a little - just watch this space to see if I achieve it!