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MY TURNERISMS

Hi I 'm answering the question, 'where do I get my ideas from for paintings?' I have posted several posts in this series on my old blog, and will probably migrate them to here for completeness, but for the time being you can see them on the original form.

Here, I am going to share what I call my Turnerisms. Turner was reputed to sketch many 'beginnings' for paintings and I find that when I am stuck for ideas there is nothing better than just seeing what comes your way. Take a brush and paint (or whatever medium you are happy with and let it rip............

Here are a random selection:

Number 1, Sunset ( could be the Lakes again)

Number 2, Early morning in a similar location

Number 3, storm brewing over a headland

Number 4, Sunset & Seascape

I always enjoy doing these very quick, very loose sketches. If I was honest, I have to say that Putting in a lot of detail to make a finished work tends to take away my interest in the subject. If I have a style it is impressionistic, loose, colourful. I enjoy being liberated.

I do appreciate and enjoy detailed paintings from other artists but whereas my colleagues often bring back the same painting to the art group week after week. I like to finish a work quickly, and move on to something else. I could never be called a perfectionist.

Another example of this: Last week the group held an evening painting session at Knowle Locks (a local canal site) and we wre interupted by rain after about 30 minutes. We headed back to the warm and dry meeting hall, where I started a painting - which was a view across the fields from the canal basin. As an afterthought, almost to use up the colour I had squeezed from the tubes, I decided to paint another picture. It very quickly turned into an abstract without a clear idea of what the end result would be:

I had recently been on holiday near Stonehenge, so that is obviously where the structures came from, but the smaller shapes had no obvious source until a colleague looking over my shoulder called them sheep and refered to the piece of music, 'May Sheep Safely Graze'. I took up his thoughts and added 'legs'. As far as I was concerned, that was another painting completed. BTW the colourful central area was the first thoughts that were placed on the paper. I have no intention of trying to improve this by taking those pink splodges away. They came and were not taken up but so what - it all represents a stream of thought.

So is it art? It is me enjoying myself certainly! Let me know your feelings, I would be very interested.

A NEW TECHNIQUE - for me anyway

Well I thought that for my first real post, I would reiterate the last post on my old site:-

I was researching 'collaging' for my Squidoo lens Making ACEO's one of a series of four on ACEO's and I became knocked out by some of the imagery that I was seeing. I decided that I had to explore the possibilities of this popular art form. My first attempt was called 'We Remember Them All'. The three photos in the piece are actually three uncles who were respectively in the navy, army and air force, from a collection of family photographs that I have just discovered from my mothers attic. They had passed to my sister and then to her son who wanted help in identifying the subjects. I did not even know of the existence of this collection until last week. So the two circumstances were quite coincidental. Anyway, the aceo:-

Maybe not that artistic, but I was happy with it as a first attempt using the few resources at my disposal. Apologies to Naj, hope you don't mind but it seemed to fit so well. The backgound was chosen because I was going to work on a musical theme, but those photos haunted me. Three brothers, three services, it just had to be. I even left out a photo of my own father in uniform because of their relationship. definitely a personal choice.

I attempted another afterwards, titled, 'Smiling on the way to hell', again scarce resources were used. I must collect much more 'stuff' with potential before I get too involved or I may lose my enthusiasm due to poor results. I did however want to share these early pieces with you.




This was based on a US poster from the '39-'45 period, and followed on from the theme in the first. The cartoon gave me the title, or was it the face of Uncle Sam. The V for victory badge (do you recognise the first two bars of this music?) was found quickly but I reduced the image of the army ration book far too much and it has lost its meaning as it is now unreadable.
I'm off to collect more photos and ephemera .........

BTW if you are interested in finding out more, or simply seeing more collage/altered art, or other paper based art Art-e-zine is a fantastic place to start.

A new Home.

I have been posting to a blog now for several weeks but It does not allow the rich mix of facilities, that I have come to see and indeed expect, whilst surfing other writers blogs.

Rather than spend time fiddling and developing ways of incorporating these facilities into my current site, I have decided to move home. This is my new home and I will now only be posting to this blog. Some of my posts from the old site were relevant to a history of my art work (what a grand way of putting it!) and formed the start of an ongoing series of posts. These, where I think it useful, will be re-posted here for completeness. I hope to be posting regularly on a weekly basis but whilst I migrate these 'historical archives' the frequency will be of necessity, somewhat higher.

Apart from selling a few paintings at exhibitions with my local art group, I have been selling over the last few months on Ebay, especially the miniature art works known as ACEO's - Art Cards Editions and Originals. I have mostly concentrated on watercolour for these but my research for a Squidoo lens (a series of four actually ) has tittilated my artistic tastebuds and I have recently branched out into trying other media. The first of these has been collage and I hope to post one or two of these here soon.

So a continuing blog in a new home, I hope that all my friends have been invited and will bookmark or subscribe to this blog. My links to favourite blogs and web sites will also be migrated from my previous home asap. Please bear with me if you had a link from my old home, it will appear here soon.