I found the process of consolidating my study statement very useful in terms of setting the next steps with my work. Today I'm focussing on the aim and objective below:
Aim 1: What happens when we truly trust the creative process? What happens if we don’t? To what extent does allowing an outcome to evolve itself, and to embrace failure and accidents, improve skills and enhance the creative experience?
Objective 3: To think on my feet and improvise, to engage with a process of unfolding, to allow ideas to ebb and flow through a period of materials experimentation, particularly with layering of drawing and painting materials.
I have been using lots of ink and watercolour to create mark making experiments. I'm drawn to blues and greys and am conscious I find their connection with the elements and the weather (sky and sea etc) very evocative. However, I do want to keep pushing with other colours too so will try those next.
As I work through these experiments I'm aware of the approaching interim exhibition. It's a pressure I want to try and ignore but is nevertheless there! It was one of the challenges I knew i would encounter and was aware that keeping the creative process the absolute priority wouldn't always be easy.
I used a redundant page of wash that I'd worked into with a sponge. This wash had been used to 'print' onto in a previous experiment.
I worked over the top it it with grey and blue tones. I like how a yellow tone, when placed first, appears to shine through the darker paint. Sometimes I add too much dark and seem to muddy it though. I like the difference of direction i the marks as it connects the eye to the two sections. I wondered how this place could evolve into more of a place.
I added some forms/figures but am still struggling with how to make these look how I want them to. I want to find a balance between abstract and representational. The lift drawing class I did last weekend fell on a day where, for some reason, my drawing was really poor! I need to carry on with these classes as there's not doubt there's huge benefit in drawing from life.
In any case, I ended up pushing away from trying to affix figures in as I need to bring myself back to the purpose of these experiments, as per the LO above.
I did a loose circular form on another piece. I like the tones here. I always feel compelled to add more, to add more etc but maybe sometimes I don't need to.
I taped it to the wall still wet and liked how the paint dripped down.
This is how I left this one. I like the addition of the blue and the sense that a form is implied but not specified.
Here, I worked across the page with some ink and watercolour. Despite liking the diagonal in the sky, I didn't think the combination of diagonal and horizontal line in the land section.
I painted over these diagonal forms and re set the sweeping lines across. It felt too bland though and I wondered if it would work better as a narrower piece of paper, ie chopped in half to create two 'landscapes' that were not on landscape orientated paper.
I actually much prefer them chopped up like this, and may even cut them further, or at least one them, to make it more square (cutting out some of the lower ground).
It's made me think about the benefits of being able to do this with these experiments. If something doesn't work, I can experiment further by chopping it up or making it into a sketchbook.