30 Day Art Challenge - Beginning August 1st.

Since I started my job as a full-time graphic designer, I feel I've neglected my illustration and fine art practice. Now is the time to challenge myself, to loosen those elbows and really work at some new techniques. 

I'm going in this with three main goals:

1) To make art-making a daily practice, moreso than it already is.

2) To broaden my colour pallette.

3) To improve my composition by not neglecting background elements.

I will try to post my results every day. Can I do it? Will I manage? I suppose we'll see!

If you care to join this challenge, do the same, and post a link to your progress in the comments.

Progress!

Progress is being made on my as-of-yet-untitled painting... soon enough, it will be time to put on the final touches. This one has been slow going - I'm not as experienced with oil paint as I am with acrylic, so I still have to work on my timing. I do love the level of detail you can achieve and the smoothness of oils, though... very exciting! I think I will simply have to practice.

New Painting, New Series!

No.1 - Acrylic on canvas, 80x90cm.

And, in the isolation of the sky,

At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make

Ambiguous undulations as they sink,

Downward to darkness, on extended wings.

                     -excerpt from Sunday Morning, a poem by Wallace Stevens

This painting is the first in a new series I'm making, called Streets, sewers, saints, heroes, beggars, and madmen (after a poem by Charles Bukowski), and I am very excited about it. I have a number of works planned, some already in the drawing stages. I won't yet go into details on the concept behind the paintings until I'm able to show you a few more. For now I will tell you that they will all have some connection to the idea of loneliness and isolation in the midst of the crowd.

* * *

Oh, Bukowski.

Sam Dillemans - Charles Bukowski

Working Out

Van Gogh cut off his ear
gave it to a
prostitute
who flung it away in
extreme
disgust.
Van, whores don't want
ears
they want
money.
I guess that's why you were
such a great
painter: you
didn't understand
much
else.

The Studio / Artspace

This may be one of the most flattering perspectives of my little studio. In my three bedroom house, only one bedroom actually has a bed in it. The smallest room has been refashioned into a classy bookshelved office (his space), and the middlest room is where I plant my rear down and try to make artwork. Cleverly left out of the image above is my messy corner dual-monitor workspace, my big-ass storage wardrobe cupboard thing, and my bookshelf/standing laptop desk. I feel guilty that I spend so much of my time in here faffing about online rather than creating. So guilty. Right now, that unfinished painting back there is bothering me, asking to be fixed, and here I am with my butt planted in my spinny chair, a cup of coffee, and an open facebook page in front of me. It's not just facebook, of course...

The top 5 productive things I do to procrastinate:

1. Clean anything I can get my hands on, the house, the studio, even the garden. Laundry goes in the washing machine, dishes in the dishwasher, papers in the filing bins. Maybe if I make sure everything around me is clean, my mind will feel less cluttered? (Of course, by then, I will have no more time left to do the thing that I'm procrastinating.)
2. Write a blog entry / update the website / "internet research".
3. Cook an elaborate meal and give myself a good long time to eat it.
4. Go to the store and run some errands.
5. Exercise.

All of these things are worthwhile pursuits except when there is something more pressing that needs to be completed. In a few hours from now, Future-me will be crunched for time and rightfully pissed off at Present-me. I suppose I'll have to make some huevos rancheros while I wait for that moment.