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.