hello, beautiful...

No, I haven't given birth prematurely, but I have bought a super-large vintage wall chart of lobster anatomy from the lovely Junk Deluxe to indulge myself. It's currently adorning our bathroom wall because it happened to complement the wall colour, and there aren't too many walls big enough in our house to accommodate it. Needless to say, I am in love with it.

 

Like Junk Deluxe on Facebook for most recent stock updates. Wall colour: Hardwick White by Farrow and Ball. The other picture is a screen print by James Brown.

Hope you have all been well. Life is slowing down at my end - I'm counting down the days until I finish my latest project and can finally get on with preparing for the arrival of the little beast currently residing in my belly.

Geological volcano maps

These geological maps of volcanoes really caught my eye this afternoon on wired.com. They are like beautiful paintings. I would kill to have one of these on my wall, like our Great Britain map, geek that I am. I have a soft spot for geology from my first degree where I studied geology for two years. Click on the link to see all eleven of them.

Seen via Design for Mankind.

EDIT: in fact, there seems to be a possibility of purchasing some of these maps from the Geological Survey of Japan, although the actual mechanism of buying is somewhat cryptic! I think an e-mail might be the best start...

Playing

I don't play enough in my work. I usually stick to the things I know and the things I find easy. I am determined to play more and to experiment with new ideas because I'm in danger of getting bored of myself. I was in the studio blowing bubbles with ink the other day and getting very messy. They came out looking like little planets.


I composed an 'about me' page yesterday for the Helfa Gelf open studios next month, and wrote some rather pretentious arty rubbish about what I want to work on in the future. It sounded rather far fetched (I think the word 'philosophy' was used), but it's true - I want to try something new, to explore the ideas that preoccupy me and not to just go with things in my comfort zone. Even though the fun stuff is enjoyable to make and I love making people laugh, I know that I can try other things too.

The serious artist

Client: Ikea

I'm in a bit of a maudlin mood about work at the moment. I'm returning to a topic that preoccupies me to an unhealthy degree - what it is to be a true artist. I know that a lot of people who stop by my blog are illustrators themselves, so maybe you will understand what I mean when I say that I wonder sometimes if I'm an artist at all.

Client: Tesco

Client: Fiat

You see, I draw a lot of animals and car parts, and I animate run cycles and dog silhouettes, all on demand and for clients, not myself. It's what I have to do to make a living and a lot of the time it's quite fun. A lot of time is is soul-sapping. When the work isn't coming in thick and fast I have the chance to work on personal projects. And that's when I come unstuck.

I have impulsively signed myself up for the open studios event in North Wales, Helfa Gelf, with the intention of building up a body of my own, what I call 'proper', work before September. It's not that I have to be a painter or sculptor to take part - being an illustrator is just as valid, but I have yearnings to paint and to make more things with my hands and this is a good opportunity to push myself. To this end, I have started to think about what I really want to do, but right now I'm frozen with terror. It's that blank canvas feeling, you know?

It's been a long time since I've seriously sat down and thought about doing something entirely self-directed. What do I want to do? Who am I? What do I want to say? I used to use my sketchbooks at uni as a kind of repository for my 'streams of consciousness' ranting and self-loathing. I wrote much more than I drew in those sketchbooks. It was a way of procrastinating about producing any artwork at all; I was 'thinking'. I'm procrastinating right now by blogging my insecurities rather than addressing them practically.

I look at other artists' work and am preoccupied by a few questions. What is it that compels artists to do what they do; to choose to paint humans or landscapes or whatever? How do they make choices and decisions about where to make a mark, which colour to use, how big a canvas to paint on? How do they know if what they have done is any good? Or is it the case that whatever you do, you have to believe that it's good enough or no-one else will either. Where on earth do I start?


What I do know about myself is that I am obsessed by dead, stuffed, pickled animals, deformities, notions of conservation and preservation, education and display. I like reading about sideshows and freak shows, the circus and the zoo. I am not a serious person and I should value my ability to make people laugh. It's not easy when most 'real' artists seem to take themselves so seriously - am I too flippant to ever be an artist?

I wonder if any of you also feel like this, and what you do to inspire your own work, to give yourself a kick start when the inspiration and self-belief are running a bit low? How do you know if what you are doing is any good, or does that not matter? Please share your thoughts!

Painting

I wanted to have a little dialogue with myself today about painting. I don't call what I do with watercolours 'painting' - it's more like colouring in, you know? I am a drawer more than I am a painter, if that makes sense. But I used to paint, back in the days when the whole world was still my proverbial oyster and I felt like I still could be anything that I wanted. I am sad to say that I feel that my horizons seem to have narrowed since then, entirely through my own fault and timidity, and it has been many years since I last picked up a proper paintbrush. Last time I handled acrylic paint was in 2006. Last time I handled oil paint was 2004. Yeah, that's a while.

For some reason artworks in acrylic or oil paint seem to hold more artistic gravitas than, say, watercolour in the eyes of most people. I can't really explain it - is it some kind of historical relic - that old masters used to sketch and make studies in graphite and watercolour before launching into their 'final piece' - the big, expensive canvas painted in extravagant oil paint? Is it the feeling that a watercolour is a sketch, or often executed at speed that gives it more of a 'throwaway' reputation? Do the solidity, opacity and physicality of thick paint endow it with more artistic clout? Whatever the case, I always argue that there is just as much merit in a well-executed watercolour painting, if not more. The medium of watercolour is unforgiving - you can't just paint over something you've cocked up or it goes muddy, your paper bobbles - it reveals every decision, every mistake and every success. The very best watercolour artists are my heroes.


Richard Parkes Bonington, the short-lived landscape painter, used both watercolour and oil. The luminosity and translucence of his glowing watercolours impress me far more than his oil paintings. There is something wonderful about how an artist must edit all the choices he will make before he commits his brush to the paper, so that every wash that he lays down is the right one, in the right place. The economy and spontaneity of watercolour are qualities that take a lot of skill to master. If you ever get the chance to see Bonington's watercolours, held in the archive at the Wallace Collection in London, I urge you to go. They are breathtaking.


On a more contemporary note, did you see the winner of the Sunday Times Watercolour Competition this year? The winner, Emma Haworth, also paints in oil - the image above is the winning watercolour painting, and the image below is an oil painting titled 'The Winter Park'. What I love about the watercolour image is how the medium used is so evident in the translucent tree trunks. I think that is delightful and would like to see it in the flesh.



Anyway, what's my point here? I am no great watercolourist, but I find it comes to me more naturally than other painting media. Maybe it suits my slapdash, can't be arsed, let's get this done quickly attitude? :-) No, I devalue my work this way. I think the fussiness, the forward planning required, and the brave breath that you have to take before laying down a big wash are things that appeal to me. But all that said, I would like to take up 'proper' painting again. In fact, I just ferreted out an array of acrylic paints from our house-moving boxes and have them lined up on the husband's desk facing me like a firing squad. Paint, or die. Now I've just got to go away and think of something to paint! Oh dear.

What do you think about painting? Which medium do you find the easiest to work with? Is it a good thing to push myself to try out new things and leave the comfort zone? Why am I so crippled with fear when faced with a blank painting board, whereas I can face blank paper without similar apprehension?

stuff...

I seem to have stopped writing about things other than my drawings and work. I can't seem to do a bit of both. If I've posted a drawing onto the blog I feel like my work is done and I forget to talk about the other things in my life. Not that you are interested in those other things, but I kind of think of this place as a diary, so that maybe I can look back later on and know what I was doing and thinking at different times.

Here are a few random things I've been thinking about:

A sudden and overwhelming craving for bitter melon.

Smile for London sounds like a lot of fun.

I've not been to an auction for AGES and I miss it.

Beautiful Welsh products from Damson and Slate.

This is one of the artists in my life drawing group.

How amazing is this film? I saw it at Annecy animation festival a couple of years back and it still blows me away and I don't know why.

I have also been investigating lots of very boring things like government grants for loft insulation, the efficiency of woodburning stoves, what to do with asbestos roofing... yeah. It's all fun and games here.

Work and stuff and Peter Callesen

Goodness me, more work is coming in! I am both pleased and tired. One of the jobs, fingers crossed, will be doing paper cut-outs using *gasp* my own hands and a scalpel and NO computer. I really hope this one works out. I did a test for it today and the response has been good so far. I like the sore patch on my index finger now. It feels like I've done something proper!

So I'm likely to be busy again and not around here as much as I'd like. Apologies in advance.


In the spirit of all things amazing and paper-cutty, here's a link to the work of Peter Callesen (that's his image above, not mine!), an artist I discovered a few months ago and whose work is quite similar to what I will be trying to achieve. I love how he manipulates the paper once he has cut it out of the sheet so that it becomes something different, even 3D. Some of them look like he simply cannot have made them out of one sheet of paper, but whether he has or not, the effect is often marvellous.

The Sketchbook Project 2011

The Sketchbook Project, organised by the folks at Art House Co-op in Brooklyn, has been running for a couple of years now and the sign-up for the 2011 project was launched in May. The premise is that they send you a bar-coded Moleskine cahier and a theme, and you create a sketchbook based on that idea, then send it back to them. All the sketchbooks are taken on a library style tour across the US, then find themselves a home at the Brooklyn Art Library where they are catalogued and available for the public to view. Themes that you can choose include: 'dirigibles and submersibles', '(your name here)', 'I'm sorry I forgot you' and 'it will be fun, I swear'.

Sounds like fun, no? You can enter for $25 until October 31st this year, with sketchbooks to be returned to them by January 15th 2011. I might join in the fun. What do you think?

On the other hand, I could just choose a theme and fill a Moleskine cahier based on that and then NOT send it anywhere, but that would be defeating the object of the project, wouldn't it? The whole point is sharing your ideas and kind of 'releasing' them out there so they aren't just stuck on your own bookshelf where nobody gets to see them. I think it's a sweet idea.

bye for now

I'm off to London tomorrow for a gander at the Van Gogh exhibition at the Royal Academy before it closes. Then I'll be attending a booze-fuelled screening of the latest Dog Judo, animated by my lovely friends at 12foot6. I can't wait to be in the city again for a day out.



On Friday we will be up at the crack of dawn to drive to Wales where we are staying for five nights, house hunting and enjoying the outdoors. Tragic news - the house with the pine kitchen and lovely outbuilding (pictured above) sold this week! I'm gutted. It was, for me, by far the best of the lot, with about an acre of lovely flat garden and only one neighbour. However, there are a few others lined up for us to nose around - a couple of enormous townhouses in need of renovation and some farmhouses in the middle of nowhere. I am so excited! This is the best part of moving house, the snooping around :-)

On the other hand I have some good news. After a couple of rounds of haggling, we have sold our house! All we can do now is cross our fingers and hope it all goes through smoothly. I am awaiting their 'cold feet' withdrawal already :-(...

Now I've just got to sell this damned flat in London and we are ready to go.

I'll be back next Thursday with news and pictures from our travels. Have a great week all. I hope you are doing something fun too. And thank you for stopping by! x

Reverse graffiti

Ever heard of reverse graffiti? I hadn't until I came across it yesterday on the Salvoweb blog and followed a link to this example in South Africa (above), inspired by other projects around the world, including this one in California (image below). I think it is a really beautiful way of making street art - I like it better than regular graffiti, which doesn't appeal to me a lot of the time. It just seems more organic and natural.


In the UK you can even commission your own, perfectly legal, reverse graffiti as advertising or whatever - from these people :-)

Amy Cutler

I am snowed under with work today. I thought I'd quickly show you the work of Amy Cutler, an American artist who mostly draws beautiful images of costumed women doing bizarre things. I think her work is fascinating and lovely to look at. To tell you the truth I've not had much time of my own to explore her work so I am quite intrigued and keen to see more. I've scanned in a drawing, titled 'Row', 2002, from that book I wrote about a few weeks ago, Vitamin D, but if you want to see more, try googling her name. That's all I've got time for today. I'm falling further and further behind with my One Hundred drawings, but you know, I need to earn me some cash...

modern art? another rant

I saw a report on the news about the furore that has been caused by an exhibition at Glasgow's Gallery of Modern Art. The point of the exhibition was about how people can feel marginalised by the Church for whatever reason e.g. sexuality, and how they could 'write their stories' back into the Bible. So to this end, the artists who devised the show presented a copy of the Bible and invited visitors to write in it. Of course (dur!) what happened was that they defaced it with obscene language and inappropriate messages - not quite what the artist intended. This resulted in demonstrations outside the gallery, denouncing the fact that the gallery had allowed this to happen (imagine if it had been any other holy book?), and now the book has been placed under glass, and any comments are to be written in a separate, blank book alongside it.

What bothered me much more than the defacement of the Bible itself (after all, I am a raving atheist), was that this had all been presented as modern art. Another exhibit was a video of a woman ripping pages out of the Bible and stuffing them into her mouth, bra and underpants - some reference to 'word as power' or some such rubbish. I cannot articulate how angry this stuff makes me sometimes. I don't think it's art, it's just bollocks. I don't care if you think that 'art' should encompass conceptual stuff like this, I still hate it - it's pretentious, pointless, provocative self-indulgence.


This news show was followed by another episode of Imagine with Alan Yentob, the second of a two-part programme discussing the place that art has in times of recession and other socio-political trouble. This second installment explored the role of funding of the arts, its history and future. It was quite interesting, if a little highbrow for 10.30 at night :-), so I lost patience when they veered into the realms of theatre. I learnt a couple of good things though - most interesting to me was the story of the 'pitmen painters' or the Ashington Group in the 1930s, which was a group of miners who taught themselves how to paint, and chose to depict scenes from their everyday lives. There is a pleasing naïveté to much of the work, and real accomplishment in some of the paintings. You can see a collection of their work at the Woodhorn Colliery Museum in Ashington, Northumberland - the website only has very small but enticing images so now I feel compelled to go and have a look. If only it weren't so far away!

All of this led to Mark and I having a lengthy discussion about the importance of arts funding today. I moaned about the lack of encouragement for people to go into the arts - I was discouraged at school and ended up studying sciences until I realised at the age of 20 that I was bored to tears with it. I also had a moan about how exclusive a lot of arts funding is - the money is usually for people who want to create pretentious fine art, you know, proper artists. I'm just a commercial drudge, me, and I make enough money (apparently) through the sale of my soul to the media, so I don't deserve to be encouraged.

Rant over. Sorry. Maybe I'll have something more fun to say this afternoon.

david hockney

I spent much of last night having disturbing dreams about blogging about David Hockney after watching an illuminating documentary last night about his most recent work. Hockney has always been a little secretive about his work, but this programme followed him for three years between 2004 and 2008 during which he allowed himself to be filmed working, much of which was painting on location in the Yorkshire Wolds. I think that by making his processes more transparent, Hockney's work really came to life. Watching him painting with such confidence and gusto in the middle of the November countryside was nothing short of inspiring. I just want to jump in the car and go somewhere remote with a canvas and some paints and not care if it's going to work or not.

I dunno, some people think Hockney's work is a pile of rubbish but I think that a better understanding of his reasoning makes it more valuable. To be sure, he's got bags of confidence and doesn't care what others think, but it seemed to me that he has a genuine impulse to create art, not just some egotistical, money-making piece of junk. Whether you like the result or not is immaterial, really - here is a man who is possessed by his inquisitiveness about the way in which we interact visually with the world and probes his ideas through painting, that's the heart of it. I enjoyed the way in which he talked about how the human eye can't be replaced by the camera, and how painting is all about the artist in an environment, standing there and looking at it. I think his work throughout his life has been about different ways of 'looking' and how we represent what we see - whether it's through a lens, with a paintbrush or, most recently, drawing on computer.


Field of Bales


Ripening Wheat

I liked the watercolour sketches he painted, executed with his lack of and disregard for traditional technique. He used the paints however he liked, more drawing than painting with them, and the resulting images have quite a pleasant naïveté. His magnificent oil paintings followed from this, culminating in that edificial multi-canvas artwork, Bigger Trees near Warter (no, that's not a typo, it's just a place in Yorkshire where they spell things funny), that was shown at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 2008. I think if I'd had watched this film before seeing the work, I'd have appreciated it a lot more.


The Road to Thwing


Bigger Trees near Warter

dylan martorell

I first came across the work of Scottish artist and musician Dylan Martorell when I saw these fantastic wall stickers for sale on French website, Domestic. They are also available from madeindesign.co.uk. If only I were brave enough, I'd either have these lovelies (picture above) on my wall, or do something like this myself. I mean, what would be cooler on your wall than a bird riding a leaping rhinoceros, or a weird lady-creature playing a saxophone with two cats coming out of it? I have wanted these for about a year now but I'm not sure if they would suit our house, although they suit my illustration taste. I'm always wondering too if it's just a passing fad I'm having, but since they are easily removed I guess it wouldn't hurt too much if I only liked them for a year. Maybe I should get them for our future place, which I'm already dreaming of - light-filled rooms with high ceilings and tall windows... ahhh...




This magnificent wallpaper panorama can be yours for £424!


Anyway, I came across Dylan's work again at the Portfolios Show I was attending a few weeks ago. He is represented by Jacky Winter Group in Australia, where he now lives. I love the intricacy and rhythm of his work, and the slightly dark themes influenced by myth and tribalism amongst many other things I am sure.

cleo mussi

Image from Homes & Antiques magazine, February 2009.

I adore the work of artist Cleo Mussi, who takes pieces of broken ceramic and re-purposes them in mosaic sculptures and figurines. She has a wonderful eye for the bizarre and a very quirky sense of humour. After all, what better to do with one of those hideous Staffordshire Dog figurines than to lop off its head and give it a different body? Or to use a pair of artichokes from a tureen as a goddess' breasts? I think it is a delightfully subversive commentary on the idea of figurines as decorative items, and ceramics as objects of value and even mild worship. Each piece is made of fragments from a whole multitude of different sources - objects from different countries, different pieces ranging from teapots to gravy boats, each bearing an individual history - which adds another layer of meaning to the finished object.

I find her latest collection of 'Mutants' very appealing. They are like demi-gods or freakish outcasts and are both funny and unsettling. It's the kind of thing I would like to have made myself, and I would definitely have one of these crazies sitting on my piano top to watch me as I play.

lacking in list, and some auction action

Listless, that is. Feeling very tired and a bit overwhelmed. I'm not the best at coping with too much work and a garden that's threatening to turn into a jungle... I went out there yesterday for the first time, it seemed, in weeks to find that the weeds have grown positively Amazonian in size and spread, one of my pumpkin plants is dead (oh woe!), and the grass is ankle deep. I spent a lot of time earlier this year tidying it up and planting my veg but I've been so busy with work and going places at weekends that I've let it slip this last month. And what with all the rain and sun it's now gone BOOOMPH! with all manner of unnameable plants and now I've got a hell of a lot to do to tame it again. That said, I spotted my first pea pod (yeah, they're a bit late...), and the runner beans are going bonkers.


'Le Vieux Roi' Lithograph on paper by Pablo Picasso, 1959.

It is Willingham Auctions time again on Saturday. This month they've got prints by Picasso, Karel Appel, Braque and Matisse up for sale. Plus some more lovely chemist's bottles, which will always sell for more than I'm willing to pay. We're probably going to give it a miss this time though because we really need to practise our housework skills!


Carborundum print by Karel Appel.


I was looking at some watches like these last time and thinking that, with an estimate of £20-40, it might be quite fun to buy something like this and use them as pendants on a long necklace or something like that. I saw such a thing at Urban Outfitters the other day and whilst not all the watches would be suitable (they might be a bit large), a dainty little one would make a much more interesting and unique version of the high-street item, which I think was £24. I particularly like the enamelled one in the picture above. There are also lots of pocket watches and stopwatches, but they might be a bit big for hanging off your neck. Not bad for £20-40, though, eh?


All images from Willingham Auctions.

the royal academy summer exhibition 2009

Every year I am afflicted by a short-lived delusion that I should enter something into the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy, usually triggered by a visit to said exhibition. It's not that I think I've got anything to enter, I just have a kind of sad yearning to be a proper 'artist' rather than some kind of commercial sell-out drudge, churning out terrible illustrations for money. But my question after visiting the exhibition last week was what on earth IS art these days? and it's a question I've struggled with for a while.

I used to love printmaking, and the Small and Large Weston Rooms at the Summer Exhibition are full of lovely prints. I'm not fussed about all the other modern stuff, some of which is lovely, but most of which is shocking. Call me traditional, but I like to see some kind of ability or skill - drawing, painting - in the piece if you're going to call it 'art'.


Image of the Small Weston Room by John Bodkin for The Royal Academy.

I am very cynical about a lot of modern art - the old notion of there being a requirement for skill in creating a work of art has been somewhat pushed aside in favour of the need for new art to 'say' something interesting or to impart upon its viewer some kind of emotion derived from the experience of staring at it. But can't a piece of art be both skilled in its execution and emotionally exciting? I could rant forever about this - I just get this niggling feeling every time I'm faced with a squiggle on a blank canvas that someone, somewhere, is pulling my leg very hard.

Tracy Emin is exhibiting a print of her Space Monkey and selling an edition of 300 for £225 per print. I don't know if that would be a good investment on my part or just a money-making gimmick on her part. I mean, the tiny amount of effort that's gone into that for a possible £67,500 in her pocket is mind-boggling. I tend towards the cynical view - pah! I'm not being taken in by that two-minute piece of junk! - but am I kidding myself? Do effort and skill really matter these days?

Hey, maybe I'll do a Space Hyena print for next year...