Playing with Circles

The last couple of days have been pretty intense for me, and I'll try to tell you about the most important events in a little series of posts. One thing I have done a lot, was playing with circles and bubbles, as "Full Circle" was the theme for a bunch of assignments in the CAPI course with Milliande. This is, what came out of the first exercise

Sorry for the bad quality of the images: my camera obviously has hard time focusing on such kind of objects. :)

Stay tuned for more!

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My Creative Space

Creative Every Day

My Creative Space

Another pretty productive week in my studio and even more so outside of it. I had almost no translation projects to work at (makes me a bit nervous about paying the bills, but I really appreciate the time & energy I can spend with my creative explorations) and no classes at school. 

First of all, we got a new assignment in the CAPI course with Milliande. It was quite a challenge for me, as I'm used to work intuitively and not to know, what I'm actually creating until the last part of the process. For this assignment, we had to stay with one shape (or a combination of them) discovered on a sheet full of scribbles. And we were encouraged to use techniques not so usual to us. So I played with one figure on repurposed pieces of card board and restricted me to 4 materials: white gesso, black water soluble pencil, burnt umber acrylic paint and graphite pencil. And these are my results so far. And, honestly, I was pretty surprised about the development.

Another collection I have started to create are silhouettes of naked trees around my village. It's all covered and pretty dark here, so the image quality isn't the best, but they are good enough for me as a reference or maybe for some transfers. The unique pattern of each tree has always fascinated me, and this little collection makes me really happy, although to get a good silhouette of one tree is quite a challenge, as none of the trees is standing separately in a plain field here. These are the most expressive ones from the images I have gathered so far.

Another series/collection is emerging from my experiments with what's left in my coffee cup after I've had my coffee.  I really love this process for so many reasons:
* the result is pretty much unpredictable, although, after more than 10 sheets, I have found some regularities & the right tool and refined my technique
* I don't "waste" expensive art supplies to play and explore, actually, I recycle, what I always love to do
* no hazardous fumes, the whole house smells like a coffee shop :)
etc. etc.
After the first layer is dry, the sheets look somewhat like this.

This one has the layer number 4 on it and isn't completely dry yet.

As you can see, I was all in shades of grey and brown last week. The only excerpt was this dramatic sunrise yesterday morning.

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My Creative Space

During the last week, I haven't created much.
First of all, because it has been really dark in my studio. It's all covered, grey and rainy outside, and the never ending twilight always weights down my creative activities.
But I have completed something this week: 4 papier-mache apples and their boxes for a good cause. When I worked the last layers on them in the dark studio, I had to think about the artists centuries ago, who created their masterpieces before electricity became available. :)

These are some of the phases they went through.

By the end, my hands were all golden :)

Secondly, the CAPI course with Milliande and some of the artist groups I'm in on Facebook have flung up impulses for intense inside work and research, mostly, about my place in the (art)world. There are thousands of artists using the same brands of art supplies and substrates. There seems not to be a chance, that I could get to them in a serious amount ever. I'm gradually ceasing to feel like I'm lacking something essential to create significant art. Instead, I'm pondering and researching, what resources I have and what ways are open for me. It even starts to be a privilege not to have too many of them, as there are less options to be weighted. :) As the motto for my latest research, could serve the words Daisetz T. Suzuki uses to define the Wabi Sabi in arts: "an active aesthetical appreciation of poverty", of a quasi (material) poverty, that is an actual (spiritual) abundance and blessing. For instance, I lately found a new use for my abandoned art journals: I'm using them as a kind of art grimoire, i.e., I'm trying out new ways of using all kinds of stuff in my art in them, even food. :) And fricken loving it!!! :)

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My Creative Space

Last week has been very rich on stuff to ponder.

First, Milliande invited us to do some pondering about our Body of Work in the CAPI course. I had never heard of it, so I did some research and stumbled upon this article, that gave me quite a shock. "Generally speaking, people don't want to know how versatile you are! With very few excerptions, I think you have to specialize for a long time before you can allow yourself the luxury of versatility." says Martha Marshall. It gave me some really heavy stuff to ponder, as I always found series of art works boring as a creator and as a viewer as well. My conclusion so far: a series of cohesive art works is kind of one work in many (at least a dozen) pieces. And I discovered some small series among my creations already created without ever thinking about it. Another participant from the CAPI course showed us this article, that helped me even more to see the point in creating in series. So I have my pondering cap on and am ready to create more in series from now on :)

Another object to ponder emerged, when I started a new intuitive painting and discovered not for the first time, that I really like the first layer and am not sure, if and how much I should add to it.

This happens again and again, and not only once I've liked the end result after many layers less than the first ones. Maybe I should start looking for ways to sell my "backgrounds"? Discussing this in my favourite art groups and doing dome research, the theme of a focal point emerged as well, and this article by Dianne Mize helped me to move forward. So I started to add to the painting, but was doing it carefully not to loose, what I had. After the second layer it looked nice, but gave me a somewhat shallow and incomplete feeling.

That day, I stumbled upon the 7 Painting Tips by Daniel Edmondson and they helped me to be brave and push forward. After 3 days of intense painting-scrubbing off-painting, the "Blooms of the Night" as I call it could be overall finished.

I still see some spots, that need a little tweaking, but I really like the result and am happy I didn't stop earlier. I'm not sure, if this will help me with my next creation, but one thing I'll probably do never again. The pretty large piece (27x70 cm) of corrugated card board I used as the surface is all deformed and was really hard to handle in my tiny painting space of about 3 square meters, as I couldn't hang it on the wall.

Sorry for the many words in my strange English, but all that pondering was an important part of my last week's creative process. Sorry for the still shaky quality of the images as well. The card reader sent by a dear Facebook friend all the way from the US arrived (YAY!), but I haven't figured out yet, how to make it work with at least one of our computers.

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My Creative Space

Last week, I might have finished (one never knows, right? :) ) 2 mixed media pieces:

These flowers inspired by Christy Tomlinson's class in LifeBook 2013

(Sorry for the blurry pics: still no card reader and almost no day light here)

And this abstract on a piece of repurposed card board box

There are some more pieces in the works. I have moved on with the 4 apples

And continued working on this canvas. It's really puzzling me, because the frame turned out to be of irregular shape.

And, of course, I worked on new assignments in the CAPI course with Milliande. One of them makes me really ponder now: the idea of the Body of Art Work. Before last week, I didn't know about the importance of creating somewhat cohesive series for each selling artist. Now, I'm seriously pondering, if and how this could work for me being extremely versatile and liking to try and learn something new all the time. It would mean to stop watching art videos and trying to do something new as long, as I have stuck with one idea, explored it and created a series of at least a dozen. Wouldn't be completely new for me, as I often work on more than one surface at a time, but a dozen is a really huge number for me... :)

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Uddate: just joined another year long challenge Creative Every Day :)