If you feel like a heart-warming documentary about artists with disabilities or mental illness then add this one to your list:
drawing
Free PDF Ebook Reissue of My 2002 Book of Poems “Manure”
I’ve finished scanning to PDF my second handmade chapbook Manure, added an author’s note to give the title and poetry some context for the reader, and made it available to freely download from this site by going to the Media Page and clicking on the link under it’s cover image.
2017 Re-issue of My First Self-Published Chapbook “Form”
The little chapbook that was my first foray into self-publishing is now freely available as a PDF ebook on my Media page. Click here to view/download.
Doco Recommendo: Jean Michel Basquiat “Shooting Star”
Daily Song Share: I Had Lost My Mind, Daniel Johnston
Documentary Recommendation: Alberto Giacometti – The surrealist, the Expressionist, the Artist.
Studies Done with Indian Ink on Paper
I have been wanting to be a bit more expressive in style, and to loosen up a bit. However, when you get RA, it’s not a good idea to have the hands tense for a period of time, which can happen easily when using pencil, pastel, etc, since you need to press harder to get that thinker and darker line.
I have been doing these studies with a light grey, mid-grey and black. So I just dilute the ink for the grey tones, and store it in little screw top containers. The top image was done with a number 3 brush, while the self portrait was done with a Chinese sable brush.The nice thing about the Chinese brush is the variety of kinds of stroke that it allows.
I guess you could think of these as drawings done in a painterly way, where there is an initial layer, or ground, just made up of free brush strokes, and from there I build up tones with density of strokes. Contour lines and little details are left to the final phase. The tricky thing to keep in mind is you don’t have any white to do highlights, so you have to be careful to dodge the lightest areas.
The Art of Loui Jover
I’m currently researching artists who utilise found materials, and also have a minimal approach, and was pleased to come across Loui Jover’s work:
Hand Painted Sacred Symbols
It occurred to me that the watercolour with salt technique I’ve been developing would look good with well known sacred symbols, since the effect definitely makes me think of what we refer to as the formless void, where limitless Chi awaits to be manifested into form and structure.
The pink lotus was the first one I thought of, since water is indeed symbolic of the void, and the lotus blooms on the surface of the murky water. The blue could be symbolic of the “blues”, or of peace.
Next on the list was the Yin and Yang symbol, otherwise known as Taiji.
I thought that I pretty much knew what this symbol was all about, but when you do the actual drawing, you learn some interesting things:
- It actually contains five circles, and three centres.
- For those that think this symbol justifies the view that there are no straight lines in nature, it might help to consider the vertical axis which aligns the centres of the two small circles.
- When looked at as a line drawing, devoid of any black or white, it’s easy to see that the two circles which form the heads of the yin and yang look very similar to a double wave form, or double helix.
The Slippery Slope: How I Fell for Painting and Poetry
For my first blog I thought it best to give some background on how I got into art.
I was brought up in the port town of Timaru in the 1980s which was devoid of any inspiration for a kid to become an artist of any kind. When I was about 6 years old I can remember at the end of class, on a friday, the teacher told us that on Monday we were all going to draw trees. I walked home looking at each tree on the way thinking “How could anyone draw that?”.
On the Sunday evening the anxiety which had been building up all weekend could no longer be contained and I burst into tears. I told my mother the reason, and she, knowing dad could draw a bit, got him to give me my first drawing lesson. Begin with the trunk, some branches from that, and smaller branches from those, and it’s done. I fet like something magical had happened. I could now create my own trees!
I went to school on Monday full of confidence, but to my disappointment, we just had to collect leaves and do rubbings of them in crayon.
It was around that time my interest in comics began to grow, especially in UK comics like Whizzer and Chips, Beano, and Whoopee. In learning how to copy their styles I was learning how to create my own people, and hence, my own worlds.
In High School art classes they taught us how to sketch and shade objects from life. I was a very timid drawer, with my whole focus being on accuracy, and not wanting to make a mistake.
They also tried to teach us to draw in a cubist with charcoal, which I hated. I also hated painting with the crappy brushes and poster paint acrylics they gave us.
I had been told enough times that you can’t make a living from art anyway, so I turned my attention to commercial art. I wanted to be like those illustrators I was seeing on movie posters etc at the time, and decided to apply for a three year diploma course in graphic design and illustration.
I had to move to Christchurch to attend the course, which was the proverbial cutting of the umbilical cord. It wasn’t long into the course that I started to realise that I enjoyed the creative problem solving process of graphic design more than illustration. We were also taught to use the standard software of the time, such as Pagemaker, Freehand, Illustrator, and Photoshop.
I used to love using photoshop to layer up textures from photos and photocopied stuff and play around with transparencies and filters. Dave McKean’s Sandman illustrations were very influencial then, as were David Carson’s experimental deconstructivist Raygun designs.
They also taught us a brief history of Modern art, and we had drawing tutors who were thriving local artists in their own right, such as Sandra Thompson, Dee Copland, Graham Bennett, and Cheryl Lucas. Drawing became something far more than sketching, and I realised my tendency to be so obsessed with accuracy and to make timid marks needed mending.
I became interested in oil painters of the past such as Cezanne, Turner, and Giacometti. I could see how oil painting allowed for a kind of layering up akin to what I was doing in Photoshop, except that it would be a stroke by stroke, intuitive method which produces a one off original work.
I was a bit disillusioned with the reality of being a graphic designer, and decided to teach myself oil painting by looking closely at those painters from the past that I suddenly had a great appreciation for.
Here are a few of my earliest efforts:
I now also had time to begin reading and writing poetry, performing it at open mic nights, and self publishing books printed out on a deskjet printer.
The funny thing is that poetry was really my first love, and sales of paintings were really only intended to fund the self-publishing of poems.
It was while the diploma course that I began having tonic clonic seizures at night, and once the course was over I went and got the diagnosis that I was dreading, but resisted the doctor’s suggestion to go on medication for it, thinking that I would either live in spite of it, or just think of it as a natural part of me which shouldn’t be suppressed.
This meant that I couldn’t get a job, which meant I was poor, which to me, meant that I was on the right path to becoming a decent poet/artist in the bohemian mould, like these guys:
GD Bates 