sketchbookery

few things in art annoy me but sketchbooks and getting paint all over my hands are at the top of the list

just to be clear though, I love nothing better than looking at sketchbooks - flipping through my own or swooning over some I have seen online; my annoyance is completely wrapped up in working in them

fear of the blank page, fear of messing up, not knowing what to do, ripping pages out or gluing them together when the work goes awry

several weeks ago I'd had enough and embarked on another attempt at a 30 Day sketchbook challenge I had bought a few years ago

some days have been easier than others, some results better than others (there has been no consistent correlation between the two)

the pages shown in this post are from the last week and bear being seen as a group as they are all on the subject (the reason why will become clear shortly)

number one:

consider the stages of your work, where are you most comfortable, beginning, middle... end?

definitely more comfortable in the middle... rarely do I have any kind of plan from the beginning so I tend to do or glue down the first thing I think of - a mark or scrap of paper, swath of ink or paint... and then figure out what I can do from there

once I get that first thing down it goes fairly easily from there

I always get hung up at the end

if I think it's finished I almost always also think its too simple

if I think it needs something else I struggle with deciding what

no vision

number two:

work in a series

easy enough - pilings and river then, with the first in the series already in the books

painting the river was way more satisfying than a piece of painted paper as in the first iteration; working directly on the page felt rather bold 

a scrap of fabric with dark lines was a nod to the river boat

this version feels looser, the river feels alive - it was the opposite in the first effort

number three:

feel free to be yourself - no requirements, do exactly as you please

easy peasy and fun to do

felt like playing with the trees so I did

rougher pilings, painted in layers with sepia ink

wintery

day four:

explore a colour you don't use a lot

I like black but don't use it a lot so...

black marker and ink for the trees

a black mono print for the river, black ink for the rocks

I applied glue to the back of the paper for the river ice and whilst attaching it I crimped it every so often to get the icy wind-row effect

watered down black ink stippled on it here and there in a quest for the granular texture of the ice 

pictorial but I'm ok with it

day five:

work with a strict time limitation; as well, try working in short bursts and then step away for a few minutes before doing the next thing

this was fun - I get way to caught up in taking all the time I want when working on things which results in a lot of dithering and usually a lot of over-working things

I did what I knew first - the dark river in the middle (which is bluer than it looks here) 

quickly followed by the painted paper below

walked away...

came back in 5 minutes, painted two pilings (the left one was shorter than shown here)

went away again... when I came back where the pilings went into the river the paper had wrinkled and bubbled horribly

whilst thinking of how to deal with that a cut-off from a sheet of practice calligraphic mark-making caught my eye 

it was perfect - neither tree nor mountain, just expressive marks that made me think of wind

a new river glued in place with paper pilings glued over top of the painted ones dealt with the mess

pleased with this one  - it does look much better in person!

day six:

dialogue between pages - what has been working, what hasn't - how can you expand on some of that, or subtract it?

I have enjoyed working with the pilings yet felt I wasn't progressing in the shapes (too hung up on the numbers I think and not trying for expressiveness)

 the horizontal lines in the first two collages of this series were also pleasing so I began with those two elements

a scrap of paper from cleaning excess paint/ink from the brush had me thinking of the pilings 

a piece of tissue paper I had accordion-folded and then soaked with watercolour a few years ago was laid over top

the rest was a fight, trial and error, do and then cover up

the top pale piece is a greatly enlarged crop of a photo of the river ice 

the dark piece on the right is a print of a painting I did a while back

(I photograph my favourite painted papers and then print them on fine Awagami printer washi paper to use in my work)

this piece, this day, was when I finally felt like I was getting it

pulling apart that landscape and bringing together the elements I care about in a way that evokes all of it, just not in direct representational way

and then...

day seven:

conquer your fear

take a piece of work you think is finished, or that you love, and add something else

be brave

and how did that go?

not well at all

loving the look of layers I added a small scrap of a print of cloth I had painted a while back

when I sat it on the page and looked at it in a photo I liked it

yet when I glued it down I did not...

having typed that last sentence, on impulse I just now went back to my deleted photos to take a second lookout said image and realized right away there had been another strip of paper off to the right that I hadn't used

hmmm...

I'll be right back...

and done!

I flipped the thin strip top to bottom for better balance of the golden brown and now am happy

somehow that thin strip of painted paper with the slash of golden brown has added a richness to the piece it was lacking

when I sat down to write this blog post I was firmly convinced I had been right in being afraid of wrecking things that I love,  that my hesitation to push forward is well justified and keeping things simple is a good strategy

and though this is not at all a resolved piece of work nor do I think I have made something amazing, I do believe it is far more interesting with these two additions... not necessarily better, but for me, more interesting

I just hope the next prompt isn't to take the same piece and do something else to it...

four more days to go 

and. how many more lessons?

take care,

Jillayne

letting me be me

"do what feels good to you"

 "don't fight it"

"give in to it"

"no expectations, no requirements, no high art ideals"

"just be yourself"

as if...

I laughed out loud at this prompt... I have been fighting myself art-wise for years now

trying to overcome how I naturally do some things that I now want to do differently

its been a continuous battle that usually results in the first few iterations of most anything I try being tossed out in short order whilst I stubbornly persist in working toward an ideal

the thought of tossing that into the bin made me laugh

but... in the interest of getting out of my own way I gave in to myself and worked on a subject that has long held my interest using materials and marks that I am always drawn to and my same old same old colour palette

and interestingly, found pleasure in all of it, especially in knowing I was meant to give in to it and that what I  created would not have to be tossed in disappointment

it came easily and felt good

(the sketchbook is in the press so no photo today)

this prompt came on the heels of the day before's direction to work in a series for the next few days, an aid to seeing how work can develop over several different but successive iterations

so, repeating myself for several days... yikes

after Day One of this was done, 

out of curiosity for where I was before 2020, I turned to my first ever sketchbook

and found this

hmm... rocks, ice, current

done long before my renewal of Yukon winters and the river, it speaks to all of it even though it was not the intention at the time it was done

and this, tissue paper crumpled and glued on sturdy paper looks a possibility for cracked ice

strips of white and off-white paper, handmade, Japanese and commercially-printed  tissue paper with a heavy textured handmade paper glued on but pulled off in disgust at how wrong it was only to have a most amazing result

with this is I see a way to interpret the windrows on the ice and a rocky shoreline

and there I sat, looking at the past and seeing nothing but relevance to the present

lesson learned

take care,

Jillayne

riding a wave...

there's been a shift in my thinking of late

not sure exactly what's brought it about... perhaps I finally just got tired of wanting to work in certain ways and decided to actually do something about it

perhaps it's the sense of time and the years slipping away from me

or it might be the influence of some of the Stoicism reading I've been doing

maybe its all of that and more

regardless, I am in the midst of the biggest spurt of creative energy I have felt in more than five years

and oh my does it feel good

several years ago I purchased a sketchbook challenge with thirty days of prompts

I started with gusto but fizzled before the halfway mark... recently I began again and have just completed Day 17

below are the outcomes of two prompts

for the one on the left, the prompt was to do something you would do if you never had to show it to anyone, most especially online

I chose to copy a sketch of JMW Turner, a favourite from a book that is a facsimile of one of his sketchbooks

(and here I am, posting it anyway!)

gesso on the page first as this sketchbook is made of drawing paper

then watercolour

the dark blotch at the top of the page is ink that came through from working on the other side but it seemed to fit in well enough here so I let it be

my favourite part was working on the sky

it's also the part that scared me the most!

the page on the right is the result of a prompt to revisit old work 

I had done some dark squiggly trees a while back and wanted to revisit them, this time with added snow, and silver foil - but in an abstract way, not a representational one

I began by laying down a dark blackish green but it got too thick and heavy, looking like a large, 

rough-edged triangle taking up 1/3 of the page or more

I scratched into with the flat end of skewer, pulling back a good bit of the paint, added a lot of swirly scratch marks and then let it dry for a while

next was titanium white paint (all acrylic paints in this one) but it started to turn grey so I brushed in more of the black-green and then it got really messy

frustrated, I grabbed a 1/2" flat brush and started trying to brush in tree branches but within ten seconds I realized everything had splodged together to make a deep blue-green that looked remarkably like the water of Marsh Lake

holding my breath, I kept going with the motion, bringing in more and white as I moved from the right of the page to the left

and then I stopped and walked away, before I could mess it up

when I cam back an hour later I saw a rising wave

I could never have planned this

if I had said 

"today I'm going to try painting a wave at Marsh Lake"

I wouldn't have had a clue where to begin

but in trying to paint an abstract tree I ended up with this

which also clearly demonstrates I know nothing about painting abstract trees in snow!

but I'm taking the gift 

and grateful for the lesson

show up, do something, see what happens

take care,

Jillayne