Why I Paint.

Group Crit. And Oil Paint Workshop: These helped me kind of understand why I paint!
 

Last week I had my group crit with a few other fellow students and it went ok. I wasn’t particularly looking forward to it and to start off the day I stupidly sat at my desk in my space. Doesn’t sound so bad, does it? Well, it meant I had to go first, in hindsight it was good to get it out of the way, it meant I only had to listen to other people for the rest of the day and occasionally ask a question.

During my session, in between being asked questions I didn’t understand and trying to avoid answering them, I was given several ideas about where I could take my work and other ways to present it. There were suggestions from sculpture all the way to a large scale projection. There was even the mention of glitter from the tutor! Now, I will warn you, I am not to be held responsible if anything happens with this medium. I’ve been looking to buy some, I get so excited just thinking about using it, but I need to wait until my money situation is a bit better.

The tutor kept pushing the idea of screen printing and some sort of digitally created symbol based on my work. Sigh. As soon as she mentioned them, I knew that that’s not what I want to do with my work, I just couldn’t put my finger on the reason why...

Still being obsessed with the thoughts of glitter the next day came about and I found myself in an oil painting workshop. Admittedly, that would never have happened if Michael hadn’t have come and got me, because I had completely forgot about it. I found listening to Michael talk about the way he works really interesting. The way he talks about everything makes it sound better than it really is. He also has a habit of wandering off to random stories and you can't help but laugh.We ended up going through why he wears a hat, violet flowers in woods, bees and red trousers... I know, right? I can't really remember why to some of it, but it possibly made sense at the time. The stages he goes through and little tips he had were good, I just wish I could see some more of his work and what his studio is like. He's a very difficult man to find anything about on the internet! There are a couple of videos of him by students but that's about it... Hmmm, I may have to bug him to see some work somehow.

Anyway, watching Michaels process and listening to him talk about other painters, made me realise why I paint and I don't really attempt much else. It is because I like the hands on-ness about it. Adding splodges of paint, layers and layers, colours, shapes... The process from an idea to a finished piece, makes it all so enjoyable. That is why.

I hope all this makes sense, I haven't read throught it haha!

ES Starting Point.

These two pieces were my starting points for getting back to my beloved elephant skull.

I had a tutorial a couple of weeks ago and I thought it would be best to have some work started, so the tutor and me had something to talk about. I started from what I had decided in my ‘Scraped A Pass' post and it worked… Well, when I say worked, I mean she didn't tell me to stop with the elephant skull. She kept telling it was just a starting point, but I know I won't budge from using it.

This skull has become an obession of mine and I’ve realised that that is how a lot of my art works happen, I remember being in first year and working from objects I had found. I would recreate it again and again, until I got to a final point.

With the work above, I just went for it. I didn’t look at any reference photographs and this is what happened. I started with the backgrounds this time and I let that affect what colours I used on the image of the object. I then used three colours which I thought worked well together and put washes on until the shape was filled. I worked on them simultaneously which I never usually do. You can see that was more carefree with these and left the paint drips. These bits of canvas had been painted on before which is why you can still see patches of it underneath through the process. This is what lead me to paint over the background so I could then try to redo them in a flat colour. I did try this but it didn’t work.I attempted to paint the one with the yellow background again, but within minutes I knew it wasn’t going to work and I shall be covering it in white again.

For now they are finished and I doubt I shall go back to them as I have moved on. I will fill you in on this in the next post.

Scraped A Pass.

It is 1.13 am when I begin writing this post in the dark early morning hours. It's that time when the brain decides it's awake and your mind wants to wander. I can hear the rain pouring down and it's my only comfort, along with the breathing of my sleeping boyfriend who lies beside me. They attempt to distract me from my lonely rambling thoughts.

I had my feedback from the first semester’s assessment yesterday and the three little words that are stuck going round in my mind are 'scraped a pass'... It wasn't news to me, last term was a messy jumble of me teetering about, from one thing to another, not knowing what I wanted from myself. I still don't know, I think.

I’m still putting off reading through their feedback.

I thought I had got somewhere, but I fear I am back at the beginning again. Apparently, I need to challenge myself, put myself out there. I don't think I'm ready for that. I know I'm not ready for that.

Of course I have ideas. Everyone has ideas. It's just the 'getting round to doing them' part I struggle with. I doubt myself and I talk myself out of doing it before I even try. It's a habit, my norm, I've always done that. Why bother when I know someone out there can do it 100 times better than me?

I was told I need to write a list of what if...'s and to do them. The struggle begins again.

I want to paint. I want to paint something that I love. I want to use colour. I want to draw it again and again. I want it to be in my every thought without worrying me who, what, where, when and why!

Maybe my dear elephant skull, but carefree-er…

I want to become obsessed with it. That's what I want.

Well, I’m glad I got that off my chest. There is something about putting something up on the internet, that millions of people could see, but I know only a few will read. It’s quite relieving. Most of this writing happened in a tired state, so that is my excuse, I left it until now to post, because I wanted to check for spelling haha! And excuse the picture, I just needed something there. It was an idea, I doubt it will happen though. They won't like it.