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I'm packing in for a while
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Posted
May I suggest?
Buy yourself something cheap-ish but completely out of your comfort zone.
If you watercolour then buy a cheap pot on black ink and a £5 dip pen with nib set. You can often use your own paper (it very much depends on the paper! I've used a Daler and a Winsor 300 gsm watercolour paper with great results, Bristol board is good but less forgiving of the pen marks, and a 425 gsm "anniversary" block weas absolute crap)
As for the block - you don't have one, if you need the idea... you use the ink, one colour ONLY, with a wash to spread it out through the shades to white paper, if you want, and you grab one of your own watercolours and try to ... not recreate it, but ink it.
Don;t try to copy it - you can't, one colour ink and multi-colour watercolour just don't match, but you CAN do it..... its like transposing music; playing a piano piece on a violin and visa versa.
Try taking a landscape and turning it into a pure black/white inked version of it... then do the same but use water to create shades of the one colour...
Having said all this - artist's block and writer's block isnlt really not being able to find something to paint - that's the excuse... it's really a form of ennui; a momentary "sick and tired of it"... Hopefully you'll grab it by he nadgers and paint away!
Posted
I get bored .so today I went in the garage and took out some old watercolour paintings . laid them on a flat board and gave each of them a coat of
satin white emulsion ,,you know the one with a sheen on the surface.my tomorrows job is to give them a coat of white mat emulsion(Better)
I may decide to drop a little plaster of paris on one or two and rub around it to make a rough finish ,so now I am READY FOR THE OFF ,IF..I can shove myself into having a go with a few acrylics ,,or may be not I don,t know .. shall I ??whose a bad boy ,did you say ???WHAT THEY WILL ONLY LAST TWENTY YEARS .not me.they are probably on their way to the dust bin ,,"did the guy mention some thing about fading what.s that ?
Edited
by alanowen
Posted
You have a good play, and don't forget to show us how you get on.
Still watching your demos on YouTube, except I've got a connectivity problem with my broadband after the storm - it takes 'em at least a week just to decide to send an engineer out: so at the moment, your latest film is buffering away on my machine and I could have cooked and eaten a three course dinner while waiting for it to resume. I might even take to the emulsion and plaster of Paris myself, just to take my mind off it.............. I get so annoyed by little things like this.....
But for those who've got good broadband speed - Alan's got some more YouTube demos going, and if you're a watercolourist you're daft if you're not watching them.
Posted
Well, I haven't posted anything here or on the gallery for quite a while. Having had three tragedies in the family all in succession, I feel I've totally lost my inspirational spirit. Since painting has always been my salvation, particularly when stressed, my total loss of motivation at this time has left me at a loss as to how to pick up a brush, let alone paint. To me, it has proved that the need to paint, or create, is something in my spirit, and maybe the same for others? In the past, just looking and observing a tree, a flower, a wild animal, and particularly the sky, has always inspired me to get those brushes out. Maybe, the old cliché will stand me in good stead. Just the passing of time, and those inspirational needs to create will return. I did a sort of doodle a few days ago, just messing about with watercolours, and put it on the gallery. But to me it looks lifeless, so that it seems to personify and illustrate the problem.
This post wasn't meant to be depressive in any way, but just to illustrate how the need to create is, it seems to me, to be a part of our inner spirit. And that spirit needs inspiration, which cannot just be conjured up by putting colours on paper or canvas. It needs something more. I hope 'that something more' will return to me soon. Meanwhile, I am finding many of the paintings by others on the gallery very enjoyable, and am content with that for now. So, keep them coming all you talented artists!
Posted
May I suggest? -- Paint/draw/ink what you're feeling.
Emptiness, ennui, loss, sadness, despair - take a brush and some black ink or single-colour watercolour (Paynes grey) and just splash it on the paper, munge it about, let those feelings flow into the paper and out of you.
These are NOT mine - just illustrative of the idea:
Don't paint a "something"... paint an "anything" - even just a random abstract.
After a few - even if you feel they're just wasted paper - you'll start to want to add extra colour or add a "something" into the "anything"...
Don't paint a "something"... paint an "anything" - even just a random abstract.
After a few - even if you feel they're just wasted paper - you'll start to want to add extra colour or add a "something" into the "anything"...
Edited
by DippyDipper
Posted
Ok... try this... this is an ORDER...
(Dalek voice) YOU... WILL... OBEY!
Whatever medium you use - ink, watercolour, etc - make a splodge. If it's ink, drop a few drops of ink onto the paper from a foot high. For watercolour, load up a large brush and splop it onto the paper.
Clean the tools and walk away for a coffee/tes.
Drying time later - come back and look at the splodge.. immerse yourself in that splodge; BE the ball.. sorry.. splodge.
Now turn that splodge into something - anything (it does not have to be a "picture" as we're used to it) --- make it the centre of a flower, a nose, a beak, a tree trunk... or just the centre of a mandala.
I promise - you will become the painting all over again. I know.. it works... I've been there..
You haven't lost your way... the path has just become misted up.
Edited
by DippyDipper
Posted
Good advice here - I've lost a number of friends this year, and it did sap my motivation; I felt, to be honest, what's the b. point? I tried a trick I'd used before - doing something quite different, in this particular case a dabble with portraiture. It helped, but things are still moving slowly; you're probably doing the right things .... keep your hand in but don't expect too much of yourself for the time being; just be thankful you're producing something and don't worry about how it turns out.
Do you find music helpful in getting you going? Or watching painting demonstrations? Both of those can work for me .... the thing is to get the juices flowing again, without pressurizing yourself.