What it looks like...

... not to sell art at the flea market. It's easy to think the display might've been a problem, but I assure you, that was not the difficulty. Most sellers seemed to simply have brought some stuff in a laundry basket and overturned it when they arrived at the flea market. The difficulty was, most of the people who were at the market looking for stuff were looking for specific things, and I don't think any of them were there looking for watercolor paintings. Most of those people were probably waiting for the Christmas market to open down in old town.

Wrong venue. Live and learn.

Shotgun Updating

Check me out, two posts in one month! It's starting to get crazy around here!

The formatting on these pictures is going to make me nuts if I goof around with it. So I'm not. Here's the rundown.

Couple sheets of paper with barely visible sketches... sketches for my next couple of projects. Hopefully those projects will be visible.

Bunch o' sticks.... if you can guess what tool I made there, you win a prize!* Double prize if you can guess whether it worked or not.

The re-do on the frame / edge. It took much less time than the first time, and is a thousand times better, but I'm still cross to have had to re-do it. Ahh, well. Live and learn. And re-do crap sometimes.

Quick watercolor painting to test out a brush brought from Beijing by a friend who visited there recently. That sucker can lay down some SERIOUS paint! Highly diggable. It will be my go-to brush of choice for watercolor tidal waves.










224214152 - sorry I didn't answer your question sooner, more pictures to come... behind the windows are pigeon holes.... square openings (16cm I think, a bit deeper than that?).

There will be more pictures when I have the front panel opening and closing and stuff.

Yes.





* There is no prize.

New! Content with actual content!

OK, last post, total cop out. Fortunately, I don't think anyone looked at it too closely! :)

On the topic of making a living as a gallery artist, versus not:

As I gather my application materials for this studio space thing, I have been meeting with some surprising internal resistance. I DO want the space, that is not an issue. My issue is what I do with my art. For a long time, I've been frustrated by the gallery art world. There are things about it that make me very uncomfortable.

A big issue - prices. It pisses me off to see a scribbled cocktail napkin going for $10000. Even though I think, well, good for them, that someone can make a living at art. In *any* way. But it's irritating. Because I know that if *I* scribble on a cocktail napkin, I'd be lucky if no one charged ME for the privilege of throwing it away. This is NOTHING to do with talent or skill. It's all about place / time / connections. That $10k napkin is a $10k napkin because that artist was in some particular situation to make it that way. Maybe it won't last forever, that situation, but the artist sure as hell will want to sell as many $10k napkins as possible in the meanwhile.

But I don't want that. Watch closely, because here's where it gets very squadgy indeed.

The thing I don't want is something I regard as crap going for a lot of money. Maybe I could make an infinitely superior scribble on a cocktail napkin, but if *I* think it is crap, I would die of shame before selling it to someone, much less displaying it publicly.

But the work I do, the work that meets my standards ... doesn't seem to be in much demand. There are only so many options in this situation. Create demand, change the work, or do something else altogether. (These options all assume I want to make some money with my work, which I do. Not so much for the money-have, but simply not to be a continued financial drain on my world.)

And that's where I get stuck. I know this studio space is a step in the direction of being that gallery artist. Fundamentally, I think it would be great to make money off my work, and that is an avenue that I could pursue. But I don't want to be the cocktail napkin artist, producing crap and selling it for mad money. It was pointed out to me that, in that context, the price is part of the piece. I don't like that. I don't feel comfortable with the meshing of value and aesthetic. Because I don't value money much at all. It is useful, but it's not interesting.

So... whether I get this studio space or no, I am going to need to figure out what I DO want. What IS a good exchange for my effort? How can I recover expenses without losing self-respect, which I can't afford? Knowing what I *don't* want only gets me so far.

Oh, and that picture is the beginning piece of the first complete object I will have made with my scroll saw. It's not very exciting, but I admit it tickles me that removing 18 tiny strips of wood makes 9 flat pieces of wood into a little shelf-esque thing.

2 steps forward..... 2 steps back.

I've been working on that wooden knot all week. Today's work centered around un-doing the work of the prevous two days. How's that for awesomesauce?

Curiously, I find I am OK with this, for a couple of very specific reasons. First, knowing how to correct screw ups is a valuable skill. Especially if one can correct them to the point of hiding all evidence of said screw ups. In this case, it's not a perfect cover up, but it's certainly going to be close enough for government work. And I don't go through life pretending screw ups don't happen, I'd rather know how to cope, than not.

Second, I shot myself in the foot by being hasty about what I was doing, and it cost me in time, effort, and result. Which means this time spent putting things back on track is also time I can spend figuring out a suitable course correction. Don't know if I'll actually learn any valuable lessons in patience, but it seems possible, and it seems like I can be happy with the outcome of this project. Historically, getting pissy and abandoning stuff when I screw up is my M.O.

So, no picture today, you can see yesterday's picture for a peek at what it will (once again) look like by the time I stop working on it today.

A Sad Day

I had to return the scroll saw, it was crap. I need a good scroll saw. I am very disappointed.

OK, so I lied.

Weeks ago, I made a noise about uploading some pictures of my recent design projects. And then I didn't do it. This should come as no surprise to anyone who has been keeping up with this blog...

Anyway, I took a bunch of pictures today, and as it always does, that made me want to work on some projects I'd done designs for and not actually made an object with.

The picture here is a sheet of embossing foil that I've drawing a bit of knotwork on/into. It's far too flimsy to do anything with, and also I've poked a bunch of holes it in with my embossing stylus. (Not to be confused with an out-of-ink ballpoint!)

Anyway, while I was playing with that, I figured it might be fun to make some kind of low relief thing like this, and then fill it with wax or plaster, making a small shiny object. I did some trials, to test the level of detail and so on, and even poured wax in, and got some small shiny objects out. So there is definitely more coming on that front. However--there are no pictures of that trial run, because I tossed all the 'evidence' in the trash. Scented votive candles are not the right source of wax for this kind of thing.

This was sort of meant to be a bookmark or something, but I'm not satisfied with it, so, it's probably going on the vast heap of Projects Which Taught Me Valuable Lessons About Something.

The Little Gloves That Couldn't

The thing about perfunctory research is that sometimes you begin the project and realize you're screwed. So it was with the gloves. Not only was my design for the gloves faulty in oh-so-many ways, but also, I kind of got carried away with the decoration on the gloves. The left on in particular. Also, the right glove. Oh well, it was fun anyway.

3rd Time, not the charm

The lower/right was totally freehand, as was the black bit on the left. The green marks at the top (with blue stitching over some of it) are the design I thought I wanted, but after doing some with the blue, I realized the lines were far too close together, and I let it go as a waste of time and thread.

Also, I got the crazy idea that I would make a pair of gloves to wear while I work (on paper stuff) because I hate the feeling of paper on my hands.

... so this was left behind, and the gloves were started. After a truly perfunctory amount of research into the manufacture of gloves.

It is a SKILL, not a TALENT.

I can't tell you how many times I've heard that life drawing is a fantastic talent to have. I agree, it would be a fantastic talent to have.... if it were a talent. Which it is not. It's a skill. It can be taught, and frankly, it's not that hard to learn. I suppose it's possible that talent could make it a little easier or faster to learn... but it's also possible that talent makes it MORE difficult to learn, because it seems like it should be easier for an artistically talented person.

For me.... it's more difficult.

Here's why: For a lot of what I like to do artistically, practice isn't a big part of success. Yes, I get better as I do things more often, but in essence, I like the first try, too. This is not the case for life drawing. I get very frustrated with my life drawing skills, and I know it is because I don't practice. I've taken classes, I've read really excellent books about this. I've done a ton of professionally designed exercises. And yet.... I still suck if I don't have step by step guidance. And it's because I don't practice enough.

What you are looking at up above is (left) a drawing of my own hand I made 3 weeks ago, and (right) a drawing of my hand I made this morning, following the explicit instructions in a book by Betty Edwards called Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain: Workbook. If you want to learn to draw, check out her books. They are excellent. The workbook is a really good hand-holder for those of us who are unbelievable slackasses about the practice part of it.

The First Time Always Sucks

Here's my first go at this, from sketch to trace to wax to plaster model. I'm not even going to bother cleaning up the plaster. The wax isn't what I wanted (size constraint) and the mold making process did not go smoothly--the plaster is weak and crumbly and full of air holes. However, lessons were learned, and I'm hoping more lessons will be learned in the near future. Especially looking forward to the lesson about how this is going to turn out just as awesome as I'd hoped.

Probably going to cast this in resin, in the end. Durable enough, available enough. Has ALL the advantages... :)

If at first you don't succeed...

... keep making little disasters until you run out of paper/patience. Figured this was better than posting each one of these individually before they go in the bin. There are about 4 square inches of awesome up there. I maybe cut them out and glue them together. The detail on the pic isn't great, even if you click through, but that's OK, they look better that way. Promise.

Monoprinting?

First try. Not bad, considering how poorly the next several turned out. I taped a pattern to a sheet of glass, and painted the design on the other side of the glass in watercolor. I tried to pull the print by placing heavy things on top of it all, with the paper being wet enough, I thought, to suck up the paint, most of which had already dried. This *might* have worked if I'd rubbed the paper with a smooth thing, instead of letting it sit--the paper tore a bit when I peeled it up, because it had adhered to the glass, instead of just taking the paint and running off with it.


This is the 2nd try. The paper was FAR too wet, and the paint was... unwilling. After this, I decided I should probably just go read about how to make watercolor monoprints at home without any print equipment, instead of screwing around wasting a lot of time, energy, paint, and paper. Oh, and enthusiam. For reasons I can't guess, I'm really into this idea right now.


After doing a bunch of reading about how watercolor monoprints can be made, I tried a few of the recommendations. All together. On one plate. As you can see, it made a relatively uniformly unattractive print. Those recommendations were: a thin base layer of hand soap as a release agent, rub the paper by hand for the transfer, use paper designed specifically for watercolor paint. Although totally uncool, it encouraged me anyway. I'm easy, I guess.


A print to give me hope! Water-based pens on the left, water soluble/watercolor crayon on the right. The unevenness of the transfer comes from me using a bone folder tool to rub the transfer over. If you click through to the full size pic, you'll see how that's not a very good way to lay the color down, even if it seemed good at the time. I don't have a brayer, or a rolling pin, or anything. Outsider art, baybee!


This is the first really successful test. The big pink blob is from the paper being a little too wet, but that also was informative. The ghost image at the top is a 2nd pull from the original drawing with easy-wash-out kid's pens. The really vibrant bits of this were added in after I pulled the print, with those same pens. The actual base print was made with watercolor crayons, though.

Distraction/Documentation

It's always late at night when I remember that I forgot to take pictures of my most recent work/progress. At which time, I *don't* take pictures because with my lack of suitable lighting, it's virtually impossible to get good pics of flat things at night. Therefore, I hereby state my intention to begin each work day (usually M-F, but sometimes a weekend day also/instead) by taking pictures of whatever I worked on the previous day. Even if it sucks. Even if I stared at a blank sheet all damn day. Even if I'm busy.

Your part in this: If you are the type of person who wants to see stuff, and sees me on AIM or something, feel free to nag. Nag me in LJ. Nag me in e-mail. I hope to get this habit fully formed by the end of September, but we'll see, won't we? We all know how habits go...

Because no post here is really complete without a photo, I give you a snap shot of the pair of gentleman's drawers I saw in old town on the sidewalk on Sunday morning. I've noticed that Sunday morning is the prime time to see underwear on the sidewalk in this town. I make a habit of documenting it photographically, in case someday someone wants to give me a book contract chronicling the Sundarpants phenomenon. Unlike SOME people, I'm not so slack as to set up a web page requesting submissions of same, so I can eventually bundle that into a book. Or, I'm actually too slack to do that. It's definitely one or the other.

New Obsession: Candle Chimnies

The way my brain works, I like to know which objects fit together in the world. I don't know why, exactly, but it is somehow satisfying when a thing fits another thing. I can pick out the right wrench or socket just from looking at the bolt head, and I love assembling things like furniture because the parts fit together just so.

Like many people, our bathroom has some candles in it, and also toilet paper. Toilet paper comes on little cardboard tubes. And one day my Tab A/Slot A, Tab B/Slot B oriented brain decided that tea light candles fit exactly inside toilet paper tubes. I tried it, and sure enough. Just so. Sweet.

Ever since then, it has been bugging me that I should be able to Do Something with that little nugget of information. I figured a TP tube would make a good candle chimney, except for that pesky 'fire + paper = bad' business. And most of the ways I could think of to fireproof a cardboard tube weren't very conducive to decorative quality (since I tend to favor delicate filigree styles).

I decided plaster might be a good way to go, but plaster tends to saturate the tube because the process of setting plaster is very efficient at making water go away. For this same reason, the plaster tends to fall off, because it becomes rigid long before the water comes back out of the cardboard, so there is no longer a stable support structure for the thing plaster. Been trying to work this out for a while now, how to preserve the structural integrity, the design options, and the not-burning-down-the-house.

Last weekend, I knocked over a full glass of wine, and it sprayed all over the wall, because our glasses are optimally designed for liquid launching. Annnnnyway: this necessitates a fresh coat of whitewash on the wall, and then the lightbulb went on. Whitewash is slaked lime, which is to say, plaster that has already absorbed all the water it is going to, and when the water that keeps it fluid evaporates, it will be just as sturdy as plaster, but without soaking the cardboard.

Yay!

What you see here is my very first attempt at this method of making the thing I want to make, and it gives me a lot of hope that this is a worthwhile effort. I have delusions of making these things regularly ('cause, you know, we get re-supplied with empty TP rolls pretty regularly), and selling them online or at the flea market. The materials are cheap, the production will be easy, and the designs can be pretty much endlessly varied. And if I can sell these, I can maybe fund some of my other activities. Which would be awesome. Also, since they won't exactly be heirloom quality objects, I should be able to sell them for cheap, which everyone loves. Cheap, fancy things. I am pretty sure I can paint them and otherwise ornament them, as well.

Lost in the Dark

This week, my computer hard drive moved and did not leave a forwarding address. In the timeless wisdom of an idiot, I failed to make back up copies of almost anything from the last six months. This includes a fair amount of art, both original and reproduction. It is at times like this that I am glad I have made a habit, however sloppy and inconsistent, of posting my photos to the internet. Blogging may be one of the forms of poor mental hygiene, but at least it has a high Preserved For Posterity factor.

When I get too much into the subtle shading, I start feeling like Rothko, but then I put some real color into it and can go on living. Anyway, it was an experiment. I didn't like it.

Test Pattern

There is a 5 panel water color composition I've been working on. By working on, I mean, staring at in frustration. Friday I got frustrated by that, and decided just to set it all aside and do some painting. For want of a better plan, I decided to play around a little with the color qualities and pigment separation of some of my paints. So, I made a grid, with circles, mixed the paint, and painted.

I can't say it did anything at all to advance the 5 panel project, except that it diverted my energy, alleviated some of the frustration, and gave me a sense of purpose that consumed a fair amount of my time on Friday. I'm not totally clear how doing something more or less completely NOT the thing I was trying to do helped me, but I was satisfied with it, and I approve of feeling satisfied.

The Heartbreak of Post Modernism

Last Saturday, I went to the local museum of contemporary art here in town, for a show on biomorphic forms in sculpture. This is right up my alley, if I had to choose one tidy phrase to describe my own sculpture, it could be that. As far as I can tell, the Kunsthaus Graz is generally regarded as a fine example of contemporary art exhibition - lots of group shows on interesting themes, a center just for Austrian photography, emphasis on mixed media and integration of electronic arts exhibits, and so on. Well curated, well documented (pamphlets and artist statements and all that). Presumably this means they are experts in their field, and when I go there I am visiting a shrine to St. Luke, holy ground, consecrated to the higher realms of capital-A-Art.

So.... why is it that every goddamn time I go to an exhibit of contemporary art, I come out angry? Am I not achieving the necessary enlightenment? Am I really so ignorant of what makes art good, in the sense of being worthy of my regard?

There's an argument that suggests that modern art is egalitarian. It's there for everyone, and so by extension, we can see that it's not there for ME (that would be elitism, you see). But I don't buy that. I am part of everyone, and if I am continually repelled by what's selected as an example of Art... there may be something amiss in the selection criteria.

One thing that really baffles me is that I can't for the life of me figure out what the selection criteria are. The selection isn't necessarily about quality of craftsmanship. It's not obviously about Concept. They have themes, so there's a vague sense of unity, but surely they don't simple accept the first 30 artists who have a good story about how their work connects to the appointed theme? Or maybe that IS the case.

Maybe I should just start submitting things to museums when they open calls for shows. I am persistently plagued by the belief that this is more about who you know than what you've got to show, but I could be fooling myself. Maybe I should sew breasts on a bath towel and start shopping it around to contemporary galleries, as Louise Bourgeous has apparently done.

Take Two

Similar to the previous painting, but lacking in black detailing, silver ink, and general mojo. It's not quite there, either. It's further from being scrap, but also, it's further from being a successful composition. Maybe this one will reveal its secrets in the fullness of time. Or, I'll spill some coffee on it, and be done with it.

In hindsight, I can see that the yellow/orange band was a mistake, and that I should've just had a red band on a blue field.

Partial Credit

With some kinds of painting, if you just keep adding paint, eventually you'll get what you want. Watercolor is *not* one of those forms of painting. Some days, you can add paint all day long, and into the next day, and still not get what you want.

Sometimes, in fact, the blank sheet of paper was more aesthetically pleasing than whatever happens after you pick it up. This painting positively reeks of potential, and I know I'm right on the cusp of either turning into a successful composition, or turning into a scrap for the recycling bin. The pisser is, I don't know what comes next. Ahh, well.

The bits that look flat/grey on the blue sections are actually silver ink. It looks much less flat in person.