Dotty experimants – MT masking tape in paper
My #arteachday post on Twitter was this experiment using masking tape. I was just testing out some making tape on various papers with my field drawings in mind and this spotty MT Washi tape my son gave me as a present started producing some interesting results so I started playing before reverting to the original ideas and purposes.
Slightly All The Time
Drawing – ink on Somerset paper 381mm x 589mm
No. Really. It is there! You have to look very carefully and maybe click on it to enlarge, but it is there. You can perhaps see why I have been struggling to get good photographs of my work! This was today’s #arteachday posting on Twitter and I immediately had a reply from someone that they couldn’t see anything! Admittedly it is a bit minimalist but I can see it standard size on my PC. It is another of my repetitive “field” drawings. For those of you who still can’t see it here is a detail:
Slightly All The Time
Detail of ink drawing on Somerset paper 381mm x 589mm
The Dream’s Malfunction
Drawing – Ink on Somerset paper 381mm x 589mm
Today’s #arteachday post was this “field” drawing from a week or two ago that I have just today managed to get a fairly good photgraph of.
Gate Gap Chase Bait
Drawing – ink on paper 147mm x 210mm
Today’s #arteachday piece to gather in the May-o is this little A5 drawing of ink on Somerset paper glued onto a stiffer watercolour paper. Goodness knows where the title came from. It originally had a quite different title but then I started to think about the word gap and its connection to gate and how gate is the Norwegian for road and that a gate was originally the gap, the gateway, rather than the thing that closes the gap and Maypoles and…
Decaying plywood structure
There are a group of us on Twitter who love the semi-abstract patterns of decaying structures and the like. My contribution was this image of the rotting interior from our old solar wax extractor.
Wherever She Goes
Paper, photographic elements and acrylic 215mm x 298mm
Today’s #arteachday posting was this collage that came about despite starting off with a completely different vision and this really only retains one or two elements from the original idea!
Preparatory study from my sketchbook – collage and ink
This dirty little number in my messy style from the messy-style sketchbook was today’s #arteachday post. This one is a probing round the Tidelines project, particularly Shingle Street, though there are also elements of Cuckmere haven I am exploring in it. More to come!
I hope I am a little nearer to being able to produce decent images of my larger work after my experiments today. Then I can start to get some galleries on this site.
The Blessed and the Meek
Ink drawing on handmade watercolour paper 559mm x 381mm
I promised to put up some #arteachday pieces today that were different to the #Letter365 work I did today. The one above I have been playing around with for ages: I just needed the time and space to let it settle into what it needed to be. I realised that I couldn’t let it fall into any casual or habitual solutions and that although it fits in to my “field” drawings and also has echoes in my Tidelines work it actually has some deep roots into some personal atavistic issues and, I am realising, my old interest in alchemy and alchemical drawings. Anyway, I am now very happy with it after its long gestation. I just need to get some better photographs of it!
Nulla in mundo pax sincera
Photographic elements on Kadhi paper 300mm x213mm
The second #arteachday piece is a collage made out of my photographs and an altered image from the newspapers of Russian warplanes amaased near to the border with Ukraine. There is a slight whiff of mushroom clouds and shockwaves.
Personal Reflections on Themerson 2
My #Letter365 piece turned out really well and I was happy that it has elements I want to explore more in other pieces, but then I had a really flat period when nothing seemed to work at all. I decided to attempt a large mixed media piece on paper which is going OK, but the light has been so poor today that I am unable to get any decent images that do it justice. All this in turn, coupled with the weather has made me most disconsolate. It can be pretty tough to see any good things when my black dog visits. So I have put up an image from yesterday at the Library of Birmingham as my #arteachday piece as it pretty much describes how i am today – blurred, indistinct, distorted and part hidden.
Shadows in the new Library of Birmingham
I’ve been out and about in Birmingham today and not had time for any art apart from my #Letter365 piece, but I went to the new Library and took some more “Personal Reflections” photos featuring the dots on the windows and this one of the shadows of the dots.
Apart from the visually arresting architecture, interesting spaces and good design the new Library was packed with people enjoying using the facilities in a respectful and cooperative way – and I stress the word “enjoying”! Mostly the people were young students working together in groups or couples as well as private study, probably more than 70% non-white ethnicity, and there were lots of smiles and as sense of comradeship and shared endeavour. It felt like a library should feel – alive. So while there may be other local issues about the way the library budget has been spent in Birmingham, the building itself seems to me to be a huge success.
I also managed to catch a nice exhibition on the work of Stefan and Franciszka Themerson, avant-guard filmakers in pre-war Poland, and another quick look round the Library of Cultures exhibition (I think it was called) which has some fantastic images and artifacts, printed materials and photographic archives. Both shows were at the Library.
A Personal Reflection on the Themerson exhibition
At the Museum and Art Gallery I poped in to see the Grayson Perry tapestries. Which were entertaining and in part visually rich and interesting. I’m unsure how much the good feeling and story in the TV programmes coloured my judgement about them. Would I have liked them less or more had I come to them fresh? I was a bit rushed too so probably took them a bit for granted which I may not have done had I not seen the programmes.