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Birthday Cards and other nonsense.
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Message
Posted
Lew, I think you do yourself a grave injustice. Your 'without thought of construction' sometimes rambling compositions may not fit classical ideas of great composition, but all that means is they do not fit classical ideology. It does not mean they are without merit, it does not mean that they do not work. Beauty, after all, is in the eye of the beholder. What is art, or even life, if you cannot challenge preconceptions and in doing so expand our conceptions and boundaries of what we consider as art.
Posted
I think it is worth considering the rules but necessarily obeying them. But I detect some thirds creeping into Lew’s random drawings. It obviously comes naturally. I like anything that makes me laugh regardless of pc or any other rules. I don’t know why the rule of thirds works, other than the human face works in thirds vertically anyway. The Japanese have a system of 4ths and 5ths in garden design. So perhaps other things work too. Anyway love the cards and please keep on stimulating our imaginations.
Posted
Glad you think that, Tony. I actually agree with all you say. Just starting things without too much planning is an interesting thing to do, and I shall continue to do it. What I have to accept is that I won't always like the result, although that can happen with pictures I have planned. It's not something I do all the time.
Yes Linda, the rules are lurking in there somewhere. We're all different. I guess too much pre-planning stifles things for me, and I lose interest.
Posted
I seldom preplan to the extent that I know how the painting will turn out. No mater where I take the inspiration from I do a very basic line drawing to start with, if I’m painting a ship etc I add in the major feature . After that it develops as I go along, I like doing landscapes this way as there is a lot more freedom. I do agree Lew that what you get is not always what you thought it would be, occasionally there are some particularly good paintings evolve. Just please keep working the way you do and don’t risk spoiling your unique skills.
Posted
I seldom make birthday/Christmas cards etc. Don't know why...they are fun to do and more personal. This year events forced my hand. For the first time ever I made a Christmas Card, got some printed, and off they went. Didn't cost too much, I'll probably do it again next year. I posted it in the gallery, so I won't put it here again. January saw three birthdays in our family. Mine, my brother's and my grandson's. So, two cards needed. As we don't go shopping during this abomination, I looked online and couldn't find anything suitable. So nothing for it but to make some. My kid brother (there are four of us) had the cheek to reach 70 this year, that makes me feel like Methuselah. So I made this card...pen and watercolour, text added in photoshop.I think your cards are really great Lew. Really enjoyed reading the words you put on your grandson's card!This is the inside page...
In a phone call, we'd been talking about staying fit during 'this.' Obviously I advised my kid brother that I was superbly fit, and why wasn't he? So I did this for the back page of the card. You'll spot immediately that it's a fake. Yes...I've used somebody else's face on my body.
Next I needed a card for my grandson. 14 going on 34, smart, funny, clever...he's into reading, drama and drums. Nothing online fit the bill...so I'm forced to make one again. I went wrong here. I decided to do a spoof newspaper about his birthday (nothing new there). For a reporting style I choose that naff sensationalist style that was popular a few years back...you know the sort, they couldn't describe a lady without giving her age and calling her curvy, or something worse. No sooner had I posted it, than I thought my Grandson won't know anything about that style of newspapering...too late...I'd sent it. He'll think I barmy. He loved it, and he thinks I'm barmy.
Both my grandson's did me cards...here they are...interesting how others see you...I'm much more like the back page of my brother's card.
Both have given me hair. I haven't got any, I gave it all away to charity years ago. I don't have a moustache either, but I've been given one. I wonder why? Maybe the last time I saw them I hadn't trimmed my nose hair. This is the closest I'll get to a chat today with anyone other than my wife. I didn't want to put this in the gallery, but it's quite safe here because hardly anybody reads the forum...unless they're barmy like me. There was something else I was going to say, but I've forgotten what it was. It might come to me later.
Posted
I thought I'd wind this thread down with my latest piece of unplanned nonsense. I'm not advocating this as a sensible way to make pictures, it's just something I do now and then to see what happens. At least half the time the results are disappointing. But I like drawing so I don't see it as time wasted. You might not agree.
For some time I've wanted to do something based on Gershwin's 'Rhapsody in Blue'. His musical ode to New York. Initially, I did some rough compositional thumbnails. I'd settled on one idea of a man sitting on a tenement window cill playing a clarinet, with a New York skyline as the background. It would be monochrome blue. This idea sat around for a few weeks. Normally, when I get an idea, I crack on with it. So I knew I wasn't going to do it, because it didn't interest me enough. So I decided to do an unplanned picture, or, more accurately, something I make up as I go along. I started in one corner with Gershwin at his piano. Then, in the middle of the picture, I drew two flapper-girls dancing. (The music was written in 1924, so 1920's New York.) Then I thought I must include a man with a clarinet, the music has a distinctive clarinet solo at its start. At this stage, they were roughly penciled in. I would use a photo for the Gershwin figure. So far, so good. It was going to be pen and watercolour. So I inked in Gershwin, and the clarinet player. Still quite keen. It was after this it started to go downhill.
Here's the picture. It's not really finished. It won't be, because it hasn't worked out.
I was going to fill the space between the main figures with a writhing mass of New Yorkers. Then I thought I'd portray the music with the spaghetti-like device you see twirling around the picture. I've used this idea before, it provides small 'compartments' in which I can draw things that don't have to relate to the bit next to it. At first I was intending to extend the piano keyboard all they way along the 'spaghetti' shapes. I didn't think it would work, so I only did a small part of that.
By now, I'd lost my way, most of it was inked-in so too late for major changes. I applied the watercolour washes, but it didn't improve things. Enough's enough, it's a picture that hasn't worked. I have plenty of them...planned or unplanned. There are bits of it I like. A major fault is that I haven't included enough New York architecture and traffic...if you'd been there, that's always at the forefront of your visual intake.
So...a duffer. But I see it as an interesting failure.
Now...put it behind me, and on to the next picture. Sorry to bend you ear (or eye), but apart from the folks on the forum, there's nobody I can 'talk-art' to...hope it's been on some interest.
I was going to fill the space between the main figures with a writhing mass of New Yorkers. Then I thought I'd portray the music with the spaghetti-like device you see twirling around the picture. I've used this idea before, it provides small 'compartments' in which I can draw things that don't have to relate to the bit next to it. At first I was intending to extend the piano keyboard all they way along the 'spaghetti' shapes. I didn't think it would work, so I only did a small part of that.
By now, I'd lost my way, most of it was inked-in so too late for major changes. I applied the watercolour washes, but it didn't improve things. Enough's enough, it's a picture that hasn't worked. I have plenty of them...planned or unplanned. There are bits of it I like. A major fault is that I haven't included enough New York architecture and traffic...if you'd been there, that's always at the forefront of your visual intake.
So...a duffer. But I see it as an interesting failure.
Now...put it behind me, and on to the next picture. Sorry to bend you ear (or eye), but apart from the folks on the forum, there's nobody I can 'talk-art' to...hope it's been on some interest.