Tag Archives: drawing

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Apparently my muse really needed pens today!

pens

A visit to both the craft store and the art shop this morning - conveniently but rather dangerously located a couple of minutes away from each other - resulted in rather more shopping than I had originally planned.

I bought 2 bottles of liquid acrylic (the only kind of acrylic I can stand the smell of), some varnish, some small metal brads and some stamps for the Diary Project - so far, so good. Unfortunately I then went a bit bananas with the pens and got 10 different ones that do a variety of exciting things. I've been doing lots of pages in my new art journal and need pens that will write over difficult surfaces such as soluble oil pastels; I'm hoping that at least some of these will.

For any fellow pen geeks out there, here's what I got:

A waterproof black Faber-Castell Pitt Artist pen - I have some of their sepia ones but I haven't tried the black before. I'm always on the look-out for good quality black pens for The Diary Project - at this point, I've probably tried most of the ones on the market.
Two Copic Ciao double-ended markers - I've never tried these before but I've heard good things about their ability to draw on almost every surface.
A Staedtler Triplus gel-liner in silver - because everyone needs a silver pen
A Sakura Gold Shadow pen in grey - these make a sort of two-tone metallic outline.
A Sakura Souffle pen in dark grey - these give a slightly embossed 3-D line, so they should be good when I want colour to stay contained within a certain area.
A Sakura Glaze pen in black - these dry to a nice glossy finish and can be used on all sorts of surfaces. I'm a bit excited by the idea of the clear one that you can write with and then layer colour over so it magically appears but I'll see how I do with this one first.
A Sakura waterproof and archival Micron 01 black ink pen - again, to test out for The Diary Project.
A Sakura fine point gold marker - see silver pen comment!
A Sakura White extra fine marker - surprisingly the most expensive pen at £3.10. I do already have a white ink gel pen that I use in the Diary Project but it sticks a lot, the one seems to give a much smoother line.

You know, I wasn't doing too badly until I saw that Sakura display in the craft shop - I've never seen this brand before and they were so alluring that I lost all sense of reason! What's truly scary is that I could easily have spent a lot more. I was actually pretty restrained: I didn't buy any sets and I didn't get every kind of Sakura pen they had, I could have added another 4 or 5 to my basket but chose not to. Instead I deliberately got a selection of different things to test out, with the idea that if I like any particular kind, then I can add a set or two to my birthday/Christmas list.

We all have things we find hard to resist - for some people it's magazines, clothes or electronics; with me it's art materials. It used to be books as well but I've managed to get into the habit of mostly ordering those from the library instead of from Amazon.

I can mostly control my addiction to art materials - I often go for months without buying anything at all but every so often I just need a bit of a splurge. My wallet is definitely a lot lighter - altogether I spent just under £40 and about half of that was on the pens. I came out feeling that I probably ought to feel guilty but really I just felt utterly gleeful and still do. I guess sometimes you just need to do these things.

Well, I guess I'll see you later - I've got a hot date with some pens!

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Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find out all that much about Dutch artist, Anita Groener but I like the way her work alternates between spareness and complexity.

Anita Groener - Labyrinth IX
Anita Groener: Labyrinth IX

Anita Groener - Freeway
Anita Groener - Freeway

These two works form part of the Crossing series. Over the space of three years Groener drove about 12,000 kilometers between The Netherlands (her homeland) and Ireland (her adopted country) and these regular road trips became a huge influence on her studio practice. She describes this series in the following way:

The verb Crossing signifies movement, a movement which is not uniform but which is drawn back and forth. In my drawings I try to capture the delineation of movements of thought processes occurring in space and time, between here and there, between the point of departure and arrival. The journey of the line marks the surface turning it into visual patterns. What you see is a physical manifestation of the layers of routes and directions taken in this process, revealing its manifold meanings.

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Artist Annie Vought meticulously cuts paper to make her beautiful and witty wall pieces. Her recent work has concentrated on writing, while previous work explored the human body through cut up anatomy drawings.

Annie Vought - To Do
Annie Vought: To Do, 2006

As a compulsive list-maker, I just adore the absurdity of this piece - just think of the hours it must have taken to cut away the paper from something as transitory and throwaway as a to-do list. She's clearly a woman after my own heart!

The use of shadows in these works interests me and I see obvious parallels with my own thread drawings where the shadows also work to complete the image. Unsurprisingly, it also delights me that she uses pins to attach the delicate cut paper to the wall.

Annie Vought - Slightly
Annie Vought: Slightly, 2006

Kirsty Hall, art, thread drawing
Kirsty Hall: Thread drawing - work in progress

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Vought is also involved in a radical form of curating in public spaces through her involvement with the Budget Gallery.

The Budget Gallery is not in a specific place. We don’t have a building, so we’re beyond low-rent. We don’t even pay rent. We set up our gallery in co-opted public spaces like vacant walls and fences. The shows are carefully co-ordinated, prepared, and publicized. The pieces are displayed much like a traditional gallery. We paint walls white, install art works and labels. We announce openings that are attended by hundreds. Refreshments are served and one can often hear jazz playing in the background. Of course, this is no traditional gallery - it’s all taking place on the sidewalk. In the end it’s a blend of all the greatest things about attending an art show, a garage sale, and a block party rolled into one.

Check out their project rules:

1. We use underutilized public spaces for our exhibitions.
2. If work doesn’t sell at the opening, it stays, in public, unguarded, for at least 1 week.
3. After the opening the unguarded work is sold on the honor system.
4. All art work in our shows will be sold, stolen*, or vandalized** and we can not pre-determine the outcome.
5. Our commission is arbitrary, optional, and determined by the artist.

*Having a work stolen is the highest honor of the Budget Gallery because it means someone wanted the work so badly they were willing to abandon personal and societal mores to acquire your piece of art. In our eyes, this may be considered a more valuable compliment to you than a simple monetary transaction.

**We suggest you consider vandalism a form a collaboration.

I find that a fascinating concept but also very challenging: it certainly brings up a lot of issues around letting go of control.

How would you feel about your work being shown in these circumstances? Could you deal with it? Would it upset you to have your work stolen from an unguarded public wall? Would it upset you more to have it vandalised?

I think I would have to make work especially for that space, with those aims in mind because if my regular art was stolen or vandalised I'd be upset. I actually had my degree show vandalised and even though I'd known beforehand that it was a possibility because of the extreme delicacy of the piece, I still had to go and cry in the toilets for a while!

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Ulf Nawrot from Germany seems to be doing a post-it project. Unfortunately I can't tell you much about it because his site doesn't have any information apart from the images and his contact details.

Ulf Nawrot - Post It Drawing
Ulf Nawrot: Post It Drawing

The page of post-it drawings is utterly fab though - go have a look. While the individual drawings are fun, you definitely need to see them all together to get the full effect. It really shows how effective a repeated form can be - even though the drawings are all quite different, the yellow of the post-it's and the repeated size, ties them all into a coherent visual whole.

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And I've done it! Yep, there's a new post over on the a-n Diary Project blog so I am now officially up to date with the Diary Project.

Sure, there's probably a dozen other things that I could do for the project, especially in terms of promotion, but now that I've done that blog post there's nothing that's urgent or lingering.

My tip of the day: make a start on something that you've been procrastinating about. It probably won't take nearly as long as you think and you'll feel fantastic when you finally get it off your to-do list and your conscience.