Rush, brush and...bin! Figuring out style in a hurry
Man, I feel like time is getting away from me. No draft blog to drop into place this week - just type and think as I go.
Wondering what the heck that title is all about? Well, it's a reference to the fact that many artists generally work on their stuff over years to define the look of their work. This comes about for example, as a direct result of the medium they use, the subject matter they lean towards, because they have a desire to work in an unusual style or to create a particular effect and/or affect the viewer in some way, or maybe they're all about experimenting and changing things around from time to time. That's just my guess by the way.
For me, I never did any of that development stuff at skool and didn't go to art college. I've just got back into 2D work after decades away, I have an art show (New Artists Fair) in September, and I want to have some original framed and matted work to show/sell. So I have to:
sketch out a whole bunch of images
decide first what those images will look like style-wise
decide what medium I will use
now I have the sketches, they actually look good as simple line drawings...
do I just scale them up as they are?
can I add colour and detail without losing the essential lines of the piece?
how am I going to use colour to create a simple, unified look?
do I want/need backgrounds?
maybe I should just do the line drawings as a couple of peeps really liked them...
can you even sell just ink line drawings? Yes, you can - it's def a thing.
And so that's led to lots of scribbling, looking at other art, reading up on doing backgrounds, colour mixing, acrylic ink techniques, watercolour techniques - because there's some similarity in the look of the work, and then putting some of the resultant ideas on paper. Not all of them worked well.
Tried doing colour wash backgrounds but it was hot and the paint dried too quickly! I could use a medium to slow that down but...I have no patience for messing around. I just want results NOW so I can get a quick idea of whether I actually like doing this thing or whether it will actually turn out as I kind of think it will (usually it doesn't).
Did another version with a more stylised background. It's ok, it's not bad but...not sure. Decided - no. Not what I want.
Cheap watercolour paper. Just don't. Get some decent stuff that doesn't spread your paint all over the place when you add...water...and scuff off bits when you use a brush with just a bit of action.
After a bit more messing around with trying actual skin tones, deciding I didn't want them to be realistic colour-wise, and taking the outlines too far and loosing the sense of movement, I ended up back at my original colour effort - using inks on damp paper. I'm getting the hang of how to drop the colours on and keep the mixes on the right side of interesting. Hint - use a tiny brush to put the ink on; using a suction dropper thingy can lead to S-P-L-A-T if you're not careful. And ink, when it's on the paper, it's on.to.stay.
I should have some images for you. Haven't had time to drag out posh phone, fire it up and sort that while light is good. I'll put some in next week. Or they'll probably go on Twitter in a day or so if you're inclined to go there. But why would you cos I haven't posted for over a week! I need to think 'schedule' for that really; it's been neglected. I don't like its latest makeover either.
So there you go. A condensed, partial reflection on how an artist might come to do work in their own recognisable way. They get kids to do all this project development stuff in school now which is probably a great help. I just look around, see what I like, try to figure out why it works (hard!), think up stuff in my head, try it, discard it and move on to the next plan. Maybe it's just a time thing. If I had all day to do art then I could afford to make thumbnail paintings or whatever, but I don't.
I have a sense of the essence of what I want to do so I've just kept asking myself 'is this what you want?/does this capture the feel of it?/am I keeping the essential lines of the piece?' and deciding yep - like it/nope - this is overwhelming the figure. I'm almost there, which is good cos I really want to get on with this.
It's also been the outcome of the scattered attention thing I mentioned last week. Priorities sorted now. Forget everything else. These 2D paintings need their concept and end look finalised and only then can the art fair work, prints to sell online, the Shopify account to set up and Instagram and shop link happen.
