I love Hugh McLeod’s drawings, and his very succinct way with words.
This cartoon of his is a favorite of mine, those three words speak so much to me. They describe so much.
He wrote a fantastic article on creativity (I looked it up just now to link you to it, to find it’s over 10 years old. It’s stuck with me all that while!)
If you’re a creative (in any field) with a creativity block – artistically constipated – this is a great resource of timeless advice, and a place to go and cogitate on the nature of making.
Yesterday I was telling you how Zak Smith’s art was the starting point in this little project of mine. At the same show I got to see the work of another favorite artist IRL, Dominc McGill.
Moloch – Dominic McGill
Again there’s a lot of mono with splashes of color, intensified contrast. I love the mishmash of text in art, increasingly it’s something I use in my own work. It was around this time the Tate Modern was showing Mira Schendel.
Mira Schendel at Tate Modern
Much of Schendel’s work was displayed hanging so you could walk round, through and between the pieces, be involved, enveloped, almost engulfed.
So I’m aborbing this work, there’s an osmosis going on. I’m gathering ideas and doodling them together.
Some Klimt, some Zak Smith. Little bits of color
Elements are coming together to form something new, something else.
Not so much with the straight directions and the boxy, something else.
I really don’t know where I’m going with this, but I’m riding the wave.
Gallery postcards, chopped up, collaged.
Destination is way down the list. Would probably be a distraction right now. Fuck destination.
Some of everything. With faces in.
As is my way (whenever I can) I moved on from here to screen printing. I’ll show you where that went next time.
There’s a project I’m working on, a commission that’s a continuation from a college brief last year (I’ll share that with you in a future post), which has led me on to begin a series of self portraits.
Pre- art school days I would have seen this as a self-indulgent vanity, but, (of course) the art school years have shifted my perspective. My subject is simply the face I’ve seen the most often. (Although I’m mainly on the inside looking out, but that’s another discussion for another time.)
Inspirations that bobbed up my horizon and found their way to develop the style for this came from a London gallery trip a little over a year ago. Firstly, Zak Smith at the Saatchi gallery. I was quite entranced.
Things I Drew and Pinned to the Wall – Zak Smith
Do love me a bit of monochrome! And the boxy, graphic-novel-layout going on here. This picture tells a story, and it looks like a story.
Girls in the Naked Girl Business: Mandy Morbid (II)
Girls in the naked girls business is a series that speaks to Smith’s parallel career in adult movies. Splashes of vivid brightness in the field of mono. More metaphors.
100 Girls and 100 Octopuses (detail)
100 Girls and 100 Octopuses is just that, and visually combines the storyboard layout with the chunky blocks of color. Largely blue.
One of the reasons I was so enraptured was the instant association with an artist I’ve adored for such a long time. You’ll know this image, even if art isn’t your thing
The Kiss – Gustav Klimt (1908)
A century on, Smith’s images resonate the essence of Klimt‘s in visual language and sexuality. Completing a circle perhaps.
Yesterday I showed you the first page of my latest project – the first one I could call finished (ish).
This is the latest page, I began playing with over the weekend.
Starting out with gesso and inks, layered up and finished with hot glue blobs
Inspired by the very lovely and talented Contadina K
Just as a little aside from other makings, Not quite a scrap book, not quite a mood board… I’m calling it my Wish Book These are some elements for pages serving to crystalise in my mind the hopes I have for the near future… Delighting in the way they find their places together unplanned (such is my style!) these are the colors and shapes I am running towards the textures and lushness the future starts here! 😀
Just thinking to myself, as I click through your wonderous creations and thoughts, how much you enrich my days.
I might not say it often, but I love you guys! X
I’ve been dying fabric for the quilt lately. I’ve been dying fabric for years. It got me thinking: The only stage I don’t like is towards the end when the residue dye – as it’s no longer active – has to be poured away. Why? it’s mostly water. But something inside me winces, it’s beautifully colored water and I don’t want to waste a drop of color.
In my perpetual quest for ways to wring every last ounce of goodness out of every stage in a process, last week I had one of those why did I never think of this before epiphanies.
It’s no good to dye fabric with now, but it will dye paper!
Decanting the dye dregs into jam jars, rolling up scrap paper and standing them in the jar.
Then just let science take over: the water soaks in and climbs up the dry paper bringing the remaining pigment in its wake.
When they’re soaked through, or the water in the jar has dried up, or when I just need to clear some space I empty the lot into a bucket to finish intermingling and eventually dry.
It’s satisfying on so many levels: using up color, repurposing scrap paper, creating patterns for future collages and art works. It does it’s own thing when left to its own devices. It’s messy and unpredictable (just like me) And it’s effectively better than free!
More variations on the theme:
Dry paper, water-splashed paper, soaked paper (hot & cold water)
Letting the liquid soak part way up, then up-ending the paper so it runs down and creeps up at the same time
Pouring more color down the inside of the paper rolls
Using paper that’s been part printed on the inkjet so the colors merge and dribble into each other
Coffee dregs instead of / mixed with colored water
Just water + inkjet printed paper (but not laser printed – that ink won’t run)
Scrumpled paper for a veiny effect
Glossy photo paper (make good use of those expensive printer mistakes!)
With a good thick layer of textures heaped onto the page, we really wanted it to look … well… less of a shambles
and splattering, squirting, dripping and flicking color at it seemed the most fun way to proceed.
Much love for the infinite ways that different materials soak, absorb, repel, or seem indifferent towards the colors thrown at them…
merging and reacting…separating and absorbing.
I can suddenly see a composition of sorts, a way forward, a ‘design’ in mind…
But Inner Kid gets twitchy: Too much the orangey yellow sameness. I need purple! Purple and scissors and curly edges. And I need them now! More! More curly edges!
Yuh. So looks like we’re headed in a new direction again…. cool…. Mutant Space Geckos!
I can feel a big burst of creativity welling up, like a wind-up toy with its springs stretched to capacity,ideas are elbowing each other to get my attention.
The air is filled with static, thunder creeping up, gathering pace, a little flicker of flash heralds the storm. Sparse, fat raindrops. More up there still to fall.
I have to run, I’ll be back with you after the downpour/out-pouring 🙂
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