..but that's fine!
I'm a long way from home, and with no visit back for me in the foreseeable future thanks to the quarantine caps that are keeping Australian Citizens out of Fortress Australia, Herbst is looking glum. But it's not all bad! I have had the pleasure of helping get an online exhibition up and running at home, and in return it's really helped me to feel that much closer to the things that I miss. Come check it out! https://macedonrangesarttrail.weebly.com Of course, there has been some sketching in the downtime, while all the information for the website came in, although one day soon I really need to stop gathering ideas and reflections and pick up a brush and paint! Tschüss! I've just noticed that I forgot to upload this into my Facebook album! Here is the layout version of the final five sketches of the challenge album.
Background, Hamburg, Pendant, Seafish and Volcano. It has just occurred to me that the big news for us this week that I should be sharing here is that we are in hard lockdown for at least another month. I can't begin to describe how happy that has made everyone around me! (Not.) While we all understand the reasoning behind the decision not to ease the restrictions on non-essential services (besides hairdressers), the long-term toll on the mental health (but not the hair) of our family and friends really does cause me some worry. Mostly I cope with this by retreating into a plethora of old favourites on Soundcloud, or by feeding everyone too much. Back in early January, I was blithely ignoring the disappointment of cancelling all of our Christmas plan B's (the original plan A of enjoying a White Christmas up in the Harz Mountains had gone out the window sometime back in November) and was happily making good use of all of the new drawing papers and pencils that I had been gifted - or, more accurately, I had demanded - from my lovely family for Christmas. After expending a lot of energy on a conscious effort over the last few years to work in a more considered and thoughtful way, I was happily churning drawings out with little thought, cheekily depending on absorbing a little of what was around me (or on the other side of the Zoom screen) and what I knew. I posted a few sketches up on my Facebook, and many of my friends delightedly responded to my request to give me feedback and ideas for future sketches. Well, not many actually made suggestions, but after one of my close creative crew suggested undertaking a challenge, I used a bit of artistic licence to compile a list of themes to work from based on the people who commented and their responses. You can go off and see the results of this on my Facebook, so I'm going to focus only on a few of my favourites on this blog over the next few months, plus a few that were not a part of the challenge, like this one: Another one of my close creative friends recently posted a link to an article about a piece that Henry Miller wrote, "To Paint is to Love Again". I'm sure that when dear Henry wrote it, his intentions were probably all good and he was simply capturing in his words the glorious abandon of convention that his lifestyle throughout the 60's afforded. I'd love to get my hands on a copy, apparently one of the libraries down in Berlin has one (because that helps me out at the moment!) and read the pamphlet in it's entirety, as I found that what I read just made me cranky. It may be a symptom of my current situation, but to be honest, in a nut shell I rather enjoy working things out for myself. I certainly don't like to discover that I fit right into an easily described personality type. So that's me in the sketch above, grumbling in my own head, about Henry leaving ideas from the past that speak to me of an inescapable future. I'm pretty sure that I used both of the oil and chalk pencils in this one. A few days later I stopped using the oil pencils altogether because I was starting to create munted, overworked areas when I was blending the tones, in particular when I was working on faces. I've had bifocals for over a year and I think that I'm beginning to finally learn how to use them. Just recently I've discovered that if I remove my glasses and get close enough to the page in order to see it (I'm as myopic as a mole) that I'm pretty much guaranteed to make a mess of things! So I have also stopped taking my glasses off to draw and surprisingly enough I'm getting a much better outcome. It also means that I have a neat stash of oil pencils squirreled away in the bottom of my drawing box that haven't been used at all yet. :) Originally in this post I was going to explain the background story of the Skyfish that I feature in my sketches, but I think I've written enough for now and it will have to wait for another day.
At the moment we are stuck at home most of the time, thanks to soaring numbers of Corona infections in Germany over the Christmas and New Year period. My neighbour reminded me today that although time seems to be dragging, it's still passing us all by. She's right! Where has this month gone?
At the end of last year I started drawing again. I've always wanted to retire and become a painter, and it occurred to me that I really needed to gain some new skills and refine some others if I was serious. Presently, I'm happy to wake up alive each morning, but as a middle aged chick with health issues, the timer is ticking so I'd better get a wriggle on if I'm going to achieve anything! Additionally, homeschooling two sub-human adults (ie, teenage smartarses) means that they are quick to sniff out any hint of hypocrisy, so I need to be seen diligently working on my own education and self-development as well, just to shut them up. Back to drawing. Last year I did a couple of online life drawing exercises and was introduced to using Pitt pastel pencils on tinted paper to study light and shadow. A quick hunt in the local arts supply store provided these materials and it was game on for a bit until I got busy. I'm pretty sure that I'm not using them in the way it was intended or described (the life-drawing sessions were back in the middle of last year's first lockdown), but what fun! I'll endeavour to record some of the results from my sketching in the portfolio here, and I'll share some of the thoughts behind them as well, at least while we are spending our time lounging around at home. Again. |
LaraPerceived by the uninitiated as a simple housewife...please keep your head inside of the vehicle at all times. Archives
September 2021
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