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Back to drawing, then - easier to store...
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Message
Posted
I've spent the morning chucking out old oil paintings that don't pass muster, and still have canvases and boards all over the flat, and am running out of wall-space. I'm going to have to get a new website - I mean, really DO it this time! - and lure people to it via Instagram, Facebook, and and any other social media I can think of. I know very well I'm not going to be able to stop painting - it's one of the three things that make me happy; another is reading; and I'm too old for the third.
Drawing, though - much easier to store drawings; so I've just ordered a Strathmore tinted pad, and another String and Space A4 pad, of 200gm paper; ideal for the Fude, dip and Artpens, and for conté crayon, carbon pencil, even washes of watercolour or acrylic. I may show fewer paintings, until I can make a bit of a dent in my large collection, but brace yourselves: postings of drawings on the way.
When, I wonder, is a sketch a drawing, or vice versa....?
Posted
It must be something in the air! I’ve been doing the same and my back’s killing me now. I’ve put aside canvases I can paint over ( see? Old habits die hard) and will put any paintings on paper or card in an art case I’ve got - in another room. Now I have to tackle an abstract for Monday’s topic at the art club, been putting off that one after a few false starts. Think I will “ abstract” part of a painting and try to develop it from there. Should be interesting…..or heading for the bin.
Posted
There must be a hint of spring in the air , having a spring cleaning myself well not actually me but the shed and room I use.
I have struggled a bit recently to paint but due to the tidying up rediscover some graphite pencils tried therm ages ago but wasn’t so sure, but it’s a new toy and loving the results like Robert I’m back into sketching / drawing don’t care what it called but enjoying it a lot.
Posted
As you probably know Robert, I always draw and sketch. It tends to be in the evening as I prefer the natural light of the day, for painting. I might start off with a sketch and leave it at that but then, if I decide to work on that sketch a bit more and start to refine it and spend more time on it, I then consider it may be a drawing depending on detail, time and end result. Drawing and sketching is as enjoyable as painting.
Posted
I also had a tidy up of my studio recently. Totally agree that paintings take up a lot of storage space. I have sold a few but I don’t actively go out to sell them! My children frequently help themselves to pictures they like but there lots on my walls too! I have a set of drawers where I flat store pastel paintings and pen and wash work. The Drawing or sketch debate is perhaps tricky however having put some thought to it I would say that sketching tends to be quite loose but a drawing is tighter and becomes more detailed. Sketching is like a testing ground for ideas but also a snapshot in time.
Posted
I HAVE painted over old canvases - old acrylics especially. I'm less enthused by the idea of painting over old oils - I admit that I have done it, but unless you remove as much of the old paint as you can, it does ask for trouble in the longer term (not that I'll necessarily be around in the longer term) and scraping them down is one of the few risks with oil painting that I'm wary of, because it's not always easy to tell if I've used a lead-based paint; and while lead isn't normally a problem, it is if you inhale it.
However - X-ray analysis of many old paintings shows that we're in pretty good company if we do paint over our old canvases; an awful lot of old masters, and probably some old mistresses, did it. So maybe I worry too much.
Anyway - having said I'll do more drawing, I finished a large (for me) oil on wood panel as my first for 2024, and have polished off several smaller ones, plus titivating a few I'd thought finished from the end of last year. Paintings need to be liberated from me soon after completion, or I'll come back and nibble at them - therefore, someone needs to buy them. If you'd all just like to form an orderly queue.... feel free to insult me with money, I'm not sensitive.