How I learnt to stop worrying about the state of my writing and love the spring

It has been a while now for me since the onset of Spring and ever since then I have had the elements of a blog run around in my head. Getting those phrases and concepts onto 'paper' has proved difficult however, Only now am I even approaching getting back into the swing of writing which will be evidenced by this and the previous post that need writing now or never at all. I was also heavily curtailed by the elephant, it is hard to write about the onset of Spring when I have barely stepped far beyond the confines of my own road due to pressures to get him finished.

But now I am feeling more verbose and decent length, less constrained walks have become the norm once more so now I am able to write.

Spring has arrived! I noticed recently that the news spent one day arguing about when Spring arrives. The Met office officially starts Spring on the 1^st of March, yet others say the official start is the 20^th, the vernal equinox. Personally this is all bunkum, Spring starts when you first smell it and this year for me that was the 4^th March.


There had been hints of imminent Spring for a few weeks prior to that though. Snowdrops in full bloom, crocuses starting to bloom and the beginnings of daffs. Not to mention the resurgence of the insect eaters and tree creepers adding to the bird song. Most recently the geese have returned to the local pond. But for me the smell is the most potent sign that Spring is here and the Spring smell is unmistakable, one day you go outside and it hits you, subtle but unignorable.


Now Spring is blossoming in full force and since noticing the change in the air many things have happened and only in the last week or so. Only a few days after the 4^th I walked outside to find the previously weak and somewhat watery sun was noticeably brighter, stronger and it was far easier to tell where it was in the sky, even when cloudy, by it's rays striking you. Most recently over the last week I have gone out wearing fewer layers and to begin with regretting the decision to put on my coat. I was caught out twice by the sunshine and the warmth and yet even when it was cloudy and I was expecting a little chill to the air I was still far to warm. So more often than not I have relegated the coat in favour of my University fleece, far easier to take off and tie around you waist if you find you don't need it.

I have even been getting definite hints of summer in the fragrance of the air and heat to the breeze not to mention some fully bloomed and beautiful crocuses on the road side. Last week was quite surprising all told, on Monday I suddenly had to deal with bees again, Tuesday I spotted a butterfly and had a few run ins with some drowsy and silly bumblebees and Wednesday I noticed that the trees are starting to bud and reveal potential leaves.

You know I did so much better with my previous post. I can only hope that editing will clean up this ramble. All i really wanted to do was talk about the Spring and throw in my own opinions of the beginning of Spring. However I will leave with a final note. While I have been enjoying exploring the Spring outside I have also been working on the images taken all autumn and winter. Picking up those images that deserve to be seen but didn't quite make it on the day they were taken. While I have yet to decide if the autumn photos should go up now or later (Autumn being technically unfinished until later in the year) I have sorted out the Winter photos and given them their own set on Flickr.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/noblueskies/sets/72157623657152834/

Any way that is all. Pictures in this entry are from post 4^th March. Enjoy Spring.

A new project - (Drink Me)

I mentioned a while ago on Facebook and Twitter about a new project happening after the elephant. I forget how much I said then so I shall re-iterate and expand here. Please forgive me if you have heard it before.

During July and August of this year I shall be showing again with ReOrsa my local artist group. I last exhibited with them in September 2009 in a group show with my painting 'Welcome to Bracknell'. At the time I felt it was important in my inaugural show to produce an image that reflected the local area and would be recognisable to the visitors who saw it. It also allowed me to stretch my creative practice a little by trying to fit my thematic concerns into a place while surprisingly rich in history was not at all a classic tourist destination. Like many local artist groups ReOrsa exhibits as a group often in disused spaces such as empty retail units, however they also have a permanent project space which I had been eyeing somewhat greedily and forming plans as to how I might use it if I should ever get the chance to exhibit.

So you should have seen my face when I get an email asking for proposals for the said same space for the new year. Well all my previously squirrelled away plans had never been written down and either they weren't anywhere near ready or they just weren't proving to be right for the space. One of the primary goals of ReOrsa is to show work by local artists that are an expansion of their practice to allow them to explore new ideas and new ways of working. One of the things I wanted to show were the results of the photos taken for my 'Perambulation' project but I knew I would be unlikely to have it finished in time, let alone sorted out exactly how best to show it. That really doesn't make for much of a proposal. However I knew that after the elephant was finished I was going to get back to my paintings, having a number of blank canvases ready including some new shapes and sizes and plenty of material to work with from the previously blogged trips to such exotic places as Cowes and Cardiff. While I had no problem showing a painting (when would I ever?? ) I didn't want to write a proposal that just said I was going to show a new painting flat on the wall. No matter how new the painting was it was unlikely to be particularly pushing the boundaries of my practice and well is pretty uninspiring as proposals go.

What I knew about the project space was that it was a decent sized shop window with a white wall behind it and a faux wood effect base at about knee level. With this information and the oft thought idea of not hanging my works but rather just leaving them lent against the wall like discarded objects I soon enough had the proposal written hastily on the back of an envelope. Here is a slightly edited version hopefully to be more concise and to fix some details about size and practicality that have changed since writing and visiting the space. It's also not written particularly well as a proposal but it helps knowing the people you are sending it too and allowed me to write it really informally.

“I've been hastily brainstorming a proposal for the project space. I was thinking that it would be interesting to make a larger point of the scale of my works than I have in the past. Obviously there is something strange about the oversized postcard images, however they are also obviously paintings and there is not a lot fundamentally odd about landscape paintings. I think the space is ideal to show them in a more unconventional way and to make more of their size as a defining character of their strangeness. What I propose is to create two paintings approx 100 x 150 cm each. They will be postcard pieces like my previous work, however in this case I want to create a front and a reverse of a postcard or rather a pair of postcards of the same city/town. The reverse painting would be addressed to me (I probably won't use my actual address but have one that is believable for the local area) as I'd like to keep the reminder of the local area and create a tie with the people who will see the works. These postcards will not be hung traditionally but instead arranged in the space as if they have just been placed on a shelf or mantelpiece (so really just leaned up against the wall). I am also considering buying/sourcing/making other scaled up props like paper clips on the same scale as the 'postcards' for emphasis, however I haven't had time to look into this more.

I want to give the impression that each work is an actual postcard and has a corresponding side. They won't actually and I plan to arrange them so only one side is visible but I don't want it to seem like the front and back of the same object as this would negate any impression of them being actual postcards. As such the reverse card will reference the other postcard in the text but other than that follow normal conventions for the writing. I plan to pick a well known place, current leaders are Cardiff or Cowes as I have been to each recently and have many images to choose from.

Basically this installation follows the same themes of perception and the tourist image that I have been working with. I am just exploring an new way to show them and trying to further the ideas of strangeness and falseness of the image by making a larger statement, accentuating the postcard nature even more by including a reverse and highlighting the scale.”

It's currently looking like the giant paperclips will be pretty easy to make but it is really early stages for all that stuff. Pretty much all I have worked out for now is that the scale would be a multiplication of 10 from reality. I now ask for suggestions for objects that would feasibly be on a shelf or mantel with postcards. Nothing that is larger than the postcard or too complex to produce scaled that much up. I'm at a bit of a loss as you will see from the image, apart from two stand in postcards I've only thought of including paperclips, push pins and a pencil. I don't need much with the postcard but I do feel there is some perfect object that I am forgetting.

It's Not Finished.................... It's Finished

Well the elephant is finished. It was taken away at 8am on Monday and I then proceeded to get back into pyjama bottoms and spent the rest of the day watching Battlestar Galactica and tidying my room. Heavenly. I also made a long list (on the back of an envelope, the best place for important notes) with as many of the things I needed or wanted to do as I could remember.

I meant to write this entry on Sunday night, then Monday but I was so knackered that only on Tuesday I got round to starting it and I quickly abandoned it for more Sci-Fi and some of the more visually orientated tasks on my list. Surprisingly I find the writing as tortured as it seemed when I wrote the first draft is not as awful as I feared, although it still contains much rambling and non relevant material. But isn't that what a blog is meant to be at least in part? I should know better than to watch the same programme all day, my mind will become inevitably obsessed with it and I won't be able to think of anything else except plot twists and character profiles until I have exhausted my supply of it. So while now I am pretty clear of it, back when I was trying to write this the first time I was having to battle my brain to think about art.

Hmm, lets get back to the point of this entry.

So the last two weeks of painting the elephant have been hectic. I have been getting up at 6am in an attempt to start work at 7:30. In practice this has ended up more often with me hitting snooze twice and then not starting till 8, but it's not bad considering. Actually the sheer length of my day from 8am to 6pm reminded me a lot of the last few months of University which is not something I have had to do (and enjoyed) since then. While it was immensely stressful (one can have too many dreams about the elephant getting lost, destroyed or coming alive) it was also extremely focusing and turned into quite an obsessive exercise. However the stress was intensified by the unknown time factors including; sections of detail that took far longer than you would have expected or sections that you expected to take ages was done in next to no time. It made working out how long certain elements would take impossible to guess. It also made when (or even whether) it was going to be finished change on a daily basis. In the end he was finished at about 10pm on Sunday which considering what could have happened wasn't that bad at all.

Ahh no matter! It is done now and I'm pretty damn pleased with him. There are still aspects to him I think I could have done better, but isn't that always the case? Plus he came together as a coherent whole which, considering that I was working from drawings and an image in my head on a 3D and (to say the least) unusual surface rather than a photograph on a flat canvas as I am used to, was wonderful. Oddly I wasn't even that wrenched to see him go. The studio has space in it again and I was glad to have it all finished. I'm looking forward to seeing him in situ more than I am sad to see him go. In fact strangely enough it was my mother that was most upset to see him go. Go figure. Apparently she's going to miss seeing him stare from out of the conservatory at her in the mornings.

Below is an image of the both of us together, taken when the men came to pick him up. I'm not sure what possessed us to have him facing backwards but it was at 8am so maybe me and my Dad were still half asleep. There are a ton of other photos on the Flickr set I made for him here is the link.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/noblueskies/sets/72157623599724090/

PS: You get geek points if you recognise and laugh at the title.

(I think I used too many brackets in this post)

Arggg!

Arggg!

Less writing, more painting

So there really is little to say about the elephant this time. I have been working hard on it, in fact more so than before as I have been trying to stretch as much painting time into the day as possible. Only about a week ago I had my finish date fixed (8^th March) and there is still a fair bit to do, I really hope I won't have to pull a few all nighters to try to get it done. When it was arranged it seemed like a fair amount of time and enough to get what looks to be very little done, unfortunately it is also some of the trickiest and most detailed work. I am also slightly concerned that I don't like some bits of the most recent developments, granted they are unfinished but still when they are done I doubt I will have any time to paint over or redo them. Scary stuff all and all and 'The Fear' has definitely set in, I am even considering get up at 6:00am so I can start working at 7:30 tomorrow. Yes I am MAD, this is evidence of the sheer level of fear I am under.

Anyway here are the most recent photos.

The truth is out there........under a bush or something

In December I blogged about my walking trips. Having started them in October I realised that by mid to late January I would have reached 3 months, I have also recently hit 100 photos in my album. Since then I have been meaning to write something about them, a reflection of sorts of the season and time. Unfortunately I have been busy with other things and producing a relatively large number of blog posts recently about the elephant among other things. Knowing my style as I do and the fact I can go on and on and on I didn't want to post too often so this has ended up waiting a while.

After looking back at the previous post I saw that I mentioned a need to show accurately the local area. This has since in my mind become a question of truth, are the images I produce an accurate reflection of my area? And I think the answer is No. But not No because I haven't been doing a good job but No because they can't be. The fact is that one photo a day might give an accurate image of my local area to me but I have the benefit of experiencing each of these days. Not only every sight but smell, sound, feel of the air and going deeper all the overall and varied psychological effects involved with going out, seeing what's there and coming back to look over the images. Some of the images I have taken are in fact visually accentuated versions of what I saw and I can only say that they are not untruthful because they conjure up or maybe show the essence of that walk, that moment not just the image but the feel of the day in all it's senses. Other photos (and this is more often the case) fail to produce the same feelings that I felt at the time.

The fact is the camera works in a completely different way to the eyes and brain. I knew this before but maybe I didn't appreciate it. How many of you have seen an amazing scene, one you feel worthy of capture but when shown on a computer screen it looks dull and uninteresting. Other times what image have to captured on a whim not expecting anything much only to when you look at it again find it is one of the most interesting images you have taken. There are many reasons for this and I'm sure the people out there who make professional observations about it can explain.

Personally I've not done much research on the topic. However for me some of this effect seems to stem from the brain taking what the eye sees and assigning areas of an image importance. But when reproduced on a flat surface it doesn't react the same way. The camera also doesn't cope with extremes as well as the eye/brain and certainly my little compact struggles under certain conditions. Dull and grey day? Well expect your images to be lacklustre, washed out or underexposed (the white cloudy sky confuses the cameras light meter royally) and lacking depth. But nowhere does the camera pick up the fresh clean breeze, sound of birdsong or some of the subtleties of light. Please don't tell me to switch to video, all I'd be adding is some tinny birdsong and I'd lose the clarity of a clean crisp shot.

In fact a dull cloudy day is the worse day to be photographing in for me. If it is light enough macro shots can come out well but other than that very little just pops off the page. Unfortunately after the sunny late autumn days and the sunny and clear snowy days of December/January, late Jan and early Feb seem to have brought a spate of these dull days interspersed with the occasionally sunny one. I have to admit that while I really enjoyed Autumn and most of the winter I am ready to be photographing flowers close up and seeing what spring brings. Rather than taking 90 odd photos around a lake and finally settling on another macro of a fungus.

As to truth. Well it will certainly be 'My Truth'. As I guess it always would be since I am choosing the image everyday and it is bound to be the best and most personally interesting photo I have taken. It's just some days I taken half a dozen upload worthy photographs and other days I struggle to be enthusiastic about the one best of the bunch, mediocre shot that might very well bring down the quality of the whole. So if you ever find yourself looking at my photos and finding there is one or two that you find mind numbingly boring and poorly lit just realise that there is something in it I liked, something that to me said this reflects today's walk, something that might look a hell of a lot better with a little sun but will probably never get posted again with it because I dislike to repeat myself and most of all, the best (in my small view) out of a bloody bad day.

But that's life, that's the weather and that was the point I was making when I started the walks.

'Phant-tastic

So I promised another posting on the elephant in my previous blog post. But alas I find myself with very little to say. It has been going well and the increase in daylight hours has been quite a shock to me truth be told, so now I am happily working till 4:30pm when before I could barely get myself going again after lunch (knowing I would have only an hour at best to work in).

So the elephant, well it is resplendent in various shades of green. I have got to about the belly level although there are still aspects that I need to get back to. It is a process of layering, taking the furthest away points in a scene and painting them first then working forward remembering to put down enough base colours so that I don't stall myself. And while this was prevalent during the last posting I have worked into quite a good system and am surprising myself with how much I get done.

The trunk is only partially finished as of yet and while I ache to get on with these little flowers I have other more pressing concerns that need dealing with first. His eyes I also want to get on with but they also are low priority as yet and I still have the bizarre notion of doing one blue and the other orange that I need to work out before I deal with them.

My mother has become quite enamoured with the whole thing, actually wanting to use a camera to produce images to send to relatives (She distrusts technology and is not the usual choice for wielding a camera). She has even named the elephant 'Edward' and since I completed the mouth area has decided he looks like he is happy about what I am doing to him. It is a little far for me but I don't mind it and I will admit happily that he is starting to look less dopey the more paint is on him and indeed he seems to have developed a smile, goodness knows from where. He will not however be named 'Edward'.

I also realise that I started this post saying I didn't have much to say. I think we will all be glad that I didn't, for goodness knows how long it would have been had I had.

Finally I will say that I have decided that although I like the idea of the grand reveal, there is not really any sensible reason to not show off a little how far he has come along. The pictures range from the last entry to today. By no means exhaustive but a far approximation. I hope to have at least one more entry of him finished but maybe I'll find something else before then. Oh and I should mention that there is a new mini site with elephant info about the parade up now: http://www.elephantparadelondon.org/index.html