Work in Progress - Floating dreams

Art for me is like baking artisan bread. You decide you want to cook a loaf, so you begin with the starter. You mix it up and let it sit for a while - maybe hours, maybe days - letting the yeast grow and develop its flavours. Next, you knead in the rest of the dough - sometimes quick, sometimes slow - and let it rise till it grows some more. Then you shape it - perhaps round, perhaps oval - and let it rest again. Finally, you slash and bake it, adjusting the heat and checking the temperature, until you have the final thing... and a beautifully smelling house. (But not always yummy tasting bread!).

Just like bread, I can't rush art. My original works begin with one idea and change their form multiple times. Drawings are less mutable than paintings, but even then, those changes are sometimes drastic. With different phases new ideas and ingredients get added, deflating the original but adding something new - maybe good, maybe bad. Sometimes I forget where I was heading with the original thing, and sometimes I don't even have a plan. I let it develop its own flavour, grow on its own, and who knows what will happen.

So with that in mind, I thought I'd share a work in progress that I am currently mulling over.

It started off with the idea of dreaming, capturing what it feels like when you let your mind float - consciously or sub-consciously. And somehow the concept of floating seems to have surfaced - perhaps in water, perhaps amongst sea weeds... But I am quite stuck with it now, I just don't know what to do next. The bottom of the picture is severely lacking - maybe I should just define the neck and shoulders?

Portfolio 2 - Patterns

The second recurring theme in my art is patterns. It seems to be emerging more and more in my recent work. I wonder why... In fact, it was weird finding some pattern work back from 1997. I didn't know it was such a long running thing. And I wonder what else I am doing now that will emerge to become a prominent theme in the future.

Patterns in my art have many meanings i suppose. I think a couple of years ago they emerged as a way of allowing me to soothe my mind. But recently, they have become a form of expression - symbolism for the insubstantial things that can't be drawn, like emotions... and thoughts. I think the combination of people and patterns could definitely develop to be a style of my own... one day.

Portfolio 1 - McCurry's Portraits

Recently, I read Katherine's "Make your own art!" blog post, which talks about the principles behind creating unique art. One of the first recommendations she made was to create a portfolio view of your work. Inspired by the connections she discovered in her own art in doing that, I thought i would follow that advice.

The first portfolio that I thought i would make is the easiest: Steve McCurry's portraits. Ever since i was little, i have been fascinated by portraiture. Faces have so much to tell! Every crease, blemish and wrinkle has its own story; the slightest muscle movement can convey so much emotion. So when the book "Portraits" came out, I had to have it.

I call the drawings that i do from his book my "lazy drawings". They are the ones i do when i have a need to draw but don't have the energy (or inspiration) to come up with something of my own. I was never good at drawing from my imagination, so references are really important to me. And finding references for an idea I've had can be really excruciating sometimes, if not impossible.

So having a book full of portraits that i will happily draw gives me the equipment i need to just focus on technique. I work on my mark making, on "seeing" shapes rather than what they represent and on capturing the personality, the likeness of the person. I think with time I have become much quicker at these. My latest portraits (the ones in black pen) are a full A4 size as opposed to the tiny ones i did before, and that is why they might seem a lot smoother. That, and the fact that i now use a finer ball point pen. In fact I almost feel like i have lost something because of that... maybe some texture? Some spontaneity?