Down to specifics

I briefly touched on art goals for 2010 in my last post but I thought perhaps i should jot down to some specific targets I’d like to hit this year.

Since I purchased James Gurney’s Imaginative Realism, I have rekindled my fascination with the fantastic. I realise that one of my limitations in pursuing this style of art is my skills in the figure and anatomy. So the first set of goals relate to this style of art.

1. Complete Drawing the human figure DVD course.

2. Find a life drawing course close to home. There is one in Eltham that I am waiting for information on.

Then I’d like to translate some of the characters from my imagination, and perhaps some descriptions from my favourite fantasy authors into illustrations. I know the industry trend is to work digitally but I’d like to stay with traditional materials.

From there I’d like to turn those illustrations into completed  sculptures, although if I am using James gurney’s recommendations I may produce basic maquettes in between.

I know I have a lot to learn about character creation before I reach this stage so it will probably be a long process to get to this point.

I’d also like to explore the traditional coloured pencil  topics of still life and botanical art (as opposed to illustration – not so much about detail 🙂 )

So the next of my goals is;

3. Complete 50 pieces of art this year. I’m not restricting my self by genre, medium or size, indeed the only restriction is that it’s frameable, and not part of a sketchbook.

So there you are, only three specific art goals for the year. I’ll let you know in a week how I’m going.

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Art Every Day Month – November

Leah Piken Kolidas is the pioneer of Art Every Day Month – I’ve decided to join up even though I know November will be tricky work wise and the temptation will be to curl up with a book to switch off my mind.

While we were down at the beach over the Melbourne cup long weekend I only managed two pictures and succumbed to the reading demon.

Here are the two pictures…

blairgowrie beach

a little painting from blargowrie on the mornington penninsula in my moleskine watercolour book.
sorrento pier

a sketch from the Baths restaurant at Sorrento pier on the Mornington peninsula.

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Travel kits and my materials obsession

The bare essentials

I carry some kind of sketch kit with me nearly at all times.
This is the bare essentials kit;
Sketchbook: in this case a small moleskine
Waterbrush
Staedtler pigment liner 0.05
and a pallete made from scribbling my caran d’ache water soluble crayons onto some sheer heaven.
Travel kit mark 2

The larger type kit that comes with my when i intend to draw.
Containing:
Sketchbook: one i made myself shown here
Travel paint kit: goache pans in a vintage tobacco tin
Pens: in my fantastic stand up pencil case i carry a variety of drawing implements and water brushes.
All my tins of paint

I’m a little obsessive about creating travel kits.
Pens & Wate Brushes

While i’m showing my obsessive side, here are my water brushes and my current crop of pens.
pencils

and again, pencils, for line, not colour
other tools

battery operated eraser, normal eraser, pen eraser, glue stick, long point sharperner, rulers,
sketchbooks

The current in use sketchbooks
top to bottom
handmade by me magnani sketchbook
unaltered moleskine for notes
Watercolor moleskine,
altered moleskine for day to day
hand made recycled watercolour sketcbook (me again)
handmade leather cover watercolor sketchbook (yep, me!)
hahnnemuille square sketchbook
Posted via Pixelpipe.

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Day at the farm

Warm up Goat

Warm up sketchs of a slightly dissagreable goat.

Page pre-prepared with acrylics
Mother Pig

This very tired looking mother pig had 6 little piglets, surrounded as I was by a gaggle of children I was only able to capture the mother before the piglets were disturbed from their rest by celery.
Page pre-prepared with acrylics
Another pig

Another pig the next stall over, the pink was already on the page when i got to it, but in reality it was a black and white pig.

Page pre-prepared with acrylics
Curly Sheep

An extremly curly sheep, this is pen and painted with a pallette made from my caran d’ache water soluble crayons. The surface was preprepared with AS Colourfix primer for mixed media.
Indian runner

perspective on this little duckie was tricky as he kept turning his head to look at me and the people around me!
kid

a lovely little kid goat, as opposed to the little terrors of human ‘kids’ at the farm.

While drawing this i got nibbled on by an adolescent goat.
Posted via Pixelpipe.

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Focusing on what I’m good at.

I’m the distractable type, I’m the first to admit it. I like trying new things and techniques with art.  I fiddle, I faddle, and i have fun.

And sometimes, i think that maybe there should be something more.

Recently I’ve signed up for a few swaps and  begun organising the local sketchcrawl. I’m a good organiser, after all it’s what i do for a living, and I enjoy it. Being involved in these things has put me in touch with a lot of people who DO things with their art.

If I’m going to do something i need to focus on what I am good at. My most marketable skill is definitly bookbinding, and i love makeing books that people want to use. I’d like to push this kind of thing towards the art side of things and so i’d like to combine bookbinding with sketching to create small limited edition art books.

Lisa Call inspired me to put my goals down, not as big amorphous intangible things, but as short “sprints” that I can acheive in a month, using the scrum methiod to breakdown my goals into tasks and move forward.

So tonight I’ve cleaned my studio,  and sat down to think about these goals and the tasks I need to perform to move forward.

I hope you all stay tuned to see what eventuates.

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A rhino today

rhino

A Schleich Rhino in my moleskine
Posted via Pixelpipe.

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Some Portrait work & Swaps

I’ve signed up for quite a few exchanges at the moment – moly_x_45 Moly_x_portrait exchange 2 and also a book swap through the artswappers list.

I’m also organising the melbourne sketchcrawl via http://sketchcrawlmelbourne.blogspot.com/ so if you are in melbourne it would be great to have you along.

Of course R. and i are still pottering- some of the work is here- http://www.flickr.com/photos/janicemarie/sets/72157603619297485/

I’ve spent a few nights on the couch this week just working on some portrait practice – Myrna has had a set of challenges I have been wanting to try out for a long time. The Frnechman exercises are about line.

While these are not fully realised paintings i have found the repetition amazing at helping me see the subject.

here are some of the results;

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