The burnishing process with coloured pencils…can be, well, tedious and hard on the old hands. Like any artist worth their salt, I have art-calluses on my hands and fingers; and burnishing ALWAYS contributes to said calluses.
But the final effect is worth any subsequent pain; the depth of colour and the seamless movement between highlights and shadows isn’t comparable; and so…I think I can, I think I can, I know I can, I know I can.
#fml
Just hiding out in my studio…
(unfinished)
“An artist is always alone – if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness.”
Henry Miller
All finished; I think I beat my own record for the number of layers in this piece.
So I’ve been studying how you can manipulate your right-brain processes, thru vigorous training. Focusing on your right-brain helps to develop your fundamental skills: line, space, perspective, proportion, light, shadows & values, and of course the Gestalt.
You have to paint what you SEE, not what you think (read: deluded…) know!
It is desperately horrid. You have to keep your gaze on your subject matter for as long as humanely possible; with barely a glance given to the paper with your actual drawing upon it!
It’s quite a difficult feat; it’s, dare I say, even a touch painful…
It’s quite a weird experience; as an artist I tend to beautify my subject matter; however, when you’re drawing with your right-brain, it isn’t stemming from the traditionally creative part of the grey matter…and so, you draw, and hone the technical elements of your artistic
skill-set.
…and that’s way I am, now, the proud owner of a wonderfully hideous self-portrait. Yay me!
Layer, upon layer, upon layer; seriously! I don’t know when…how, to stop…my.life.story.
Just. Say. No.
Just having a little play with some of my, ‘I-might-use-it-one-day’ artist hoard…
(unfinished)
(mixed media, ink & coloured pencil on paper)
When you’re neurotically obsessing…there’s nothing more pleasurabley cathartic, than stomping all over your creative juice-maker!
I’ve finally finished the piece ‘Automated Prospects’, and well…
I wonder if an artist, any artist, would (could?!) complete any of their artworks…if they didn’t have a patron, or a deadline, or a show?! Now, I’m not talking about finishing the drawing, it’s all the unrecognised minuatae of a piece: tidying up all the edges, ensuring all the lines are crisp/sharp/unsmudged-by-a-wayward-elbow, cleaning up any fingerprints or smudges…and then the tedium really begins, oh lordy! The sealing, varnishing, buffing, framing, wiring for hanging etc. etc. etc. etc. however, all 100% necessary and therefore I can drag my feet up the hill.
It’s finally finished; the final dying embers of creativity, the last moments of birth…technical, chores, methodical, banal details, the little details, polishing up…tidying up edges, etc…I try to convince myself that no one will notice, so I needn’t spend those agonising hours finishing my work, to a level only reached by the chronically OCD…and so I don’t succumb to the muse, I walk away…for all of 5 mins. And yet I believe my lies…every time.
After spending lengthy hours on commissioned pieces, focusing on art…just for yourself, is delicious! Just like coming home.
(unfinished piece depicted)
Grae Hastings 