9th September. This Part is all about collections and the overall task is to put together a number of these, including crockery, utensils, items of clothing, pens and pencils, and personal groupings, and in this exercise, to paint at least … Continue reading Part 2, exercise 2:1 – unusual media plus contextual content appraisal
This has been both a nightmare and a revelation. The first because ‘small’ is a challenge on several levels (all those faculties that don’t work so well as you get older), and the second because some of it did work relatively well despite those constraints. I also realised that my initial choice of twenty found images did not necessarily map well onto the actual assignment: some were really not at all interesting to paint, and some were, for me, impossible to paint. As a result, I substituted a few as the task unfolded. Luckily – or by design – some … Continue reading Assignment 1 – objective evaluation
For this part of the assignment, we’re asked to arrange the twenty small paintings on white paper to make a large painting, and then to consider groupings. I used two A1 pieces of foam board temporarily held together with masking tape and propped on my easel. The first arrangement goes from animals through fictional species, to space then place, and finally to Diana on her own as she always seemed to be despite the crowds. The second arrangement is more pragmatic – it’s the ones I’ve put into my desktop and Alexa wallpaper folders. The rejects are down the right … Continue reading Assignment 1 – arranging twenty small paintings to make one large one
This first image comes from a book published in 1957, detailing the history of the school I attended from 1960 to 1967. It has significance because, back in the late 1800’s, Cleckheaton was denied a grammar school, the council awarding … Continue reading Assignment 1: 11-20 paintings of found images
Filmic poet and photographer, Janet makes exquisite short videos, molten drops in an ocean of intense experience, some of them very raw indeed. This stunning piece titled The Huntress has been “selected for the Zebra Poetry Festival in Berlin. The … Continue reading Janet Lees
I need a new category; I’m going to call it ‘dressing up box’. As a kid I had one of those – an old suitcase actually – full of bits of material and cast-offs, rejects to everyone but a child in the 1950s with no access to Toys (were) Us. One of the rejects was a bright purple table cloth my dad brought back from his time in India during WWII. It was embroidered with silver wire thread, and totally unwashable which meant it never saw a table. My mother complained that he’d brought bananas for her sister, although how … Continue reading John Cage – As Slow As Possible
The task is to complete twenty paintings of the found images used earlier in this section, the size and support to be a consistent 6″ x 6″ HP watercolour paper. While completing the previous exercises, I began to realise that … Continue reading Assignment 1: 10 of 20 paintings of found images
I came to this podcast somewhere in the middle following a recommendation and I’ve been working my way through the rest because they are superb. New to the whole art history malarkey, my co-student and I, both of us with more science in our lives than art, were floundering around in what seemed to be impenetrable verbiage about paintings we’d never heard of. It all seemed so far removed from what we both understood, and it used language that was unfamiliar – some of it language we thought we already owned but that seemed to have been re-purposed. Left to … Continue reading The Lonely Palette
Ever wondered what all the little codes were about on a tube of paint? This site has all kinds of information about paint and paint-related materials. A quick search shows you how you might mix your favourite kind of paint rather than buy it ready-made. There’s information there too about brushes, erasers, different forms of charcoal, and much else. Continue reading That pigment thing
One of my found photos is a still from the Loch Arkaig osprey cam taken just after the first chick hatched and while there were still two eggs. Of all the photos, this is the one I actually wanted to paint and, for the assignment, I will. But the specifications are that each painting should be on a 6″ x 6″ square of HP watercolour paper and I really wanted to make something bigger. So that’s what I’m doing; getting it out of my system, maybe! This is the tipping point; the support is flimsy and won’t take much more … Continue reading Supplementary project
Strayfish Arts 