Where Is My Motivation?

Today I've been feeling rather off: physically and creatively - although the latter's been more frequent as of late. I need some serious inspiration and I need it now, though Inspire Me Thursday is good for a weekly dose.

We've just started a new term at school 2 weeks ago, so it's been pretty draining getting back into the gist of things, especially after having an exceptional two week school holiday break. I'm finding it harder to concentrate, and then there's the whole assessment crap coming up yet again. And I've been a bit sick the past couple of days, but nothing to really complain about. Just your average change of seasons drama I suppose.

It's taken me a while, but I'm really starting to get into photography. I just take pictures of things that interest me, and things that I think are beautiful. Today while I was trying to take photos of broken flowers - killed by the recent late Autumn rains - floating on top of the water in my pool, I found I wasn't being met with much success. Instead, I came to find just how cool the light patterns were on the green-coloured water and the shapes they created.

So being under the influence of hands - as I have been lately - I stuck my hands out in random gestures over the water and photographed them. These images above haven't been edited at all. I was quite happy with how they turned out.

2B & 4B graphite in home vapd

Also, on the advice of my awesome fibre/visual artist friend Nadiah (who you most likely know as the creative mastermind and entrepreneur behind LeArmoire) I've decided to continue my venture into abstract figures, but like the half-drawn, work-in-progress lady above. I'm not sure where it will take me, but I would like to - for the moment - draw these figures in distorted, yet real-life situations. It'll be nice to start depicting different things to my usual subject matter as well.

Also, I'd like to get into more sites like Inspire Me Thursday. I tried doing something for Illustration Friday once, but I couldn't post my link on their site. That was a bit of a downer. If anyone knows of any similar sites or blogs that deal out prompts, I'd really appreciate the information :)

The Body

A new term, a new topic. In art we are now studying - of all things - the BODY. Now, being the sort of artist who frequently illustrates bodies, as you can imagine: I was enthralled. I found that I had to get a new VAPD (art journal / sketchbook) to use this term, as my old one only has maybe 5 pages left.

Today we were asked to begin drawing a particular gesture using our hands and fingers. Although being a senior class, our teacher still had to tell us not to use any *hem hem* "rude" gestures. I haven't finished my drawing yet, but I will do it over the weekend. I enjoy drawing the joints and nails and all the hand bits.

6B pencil in new school VAPD

Our teacher has also been setting us some still life work: statuettes and dolls. Appropriating a statuette of the woman in Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus", I drew this:

Willow charcoal, "synthetic" compressed charcoal & white charcoal on art paper.

I just know that I am going to love this term in Visual Arts. We're also studying video in Photography now, which is going to be good. At the moment we're watching "The Seventh Seal". I can't wait till we begin making our own films. It should be interesting :)

Family

Graphite in VAPD. "Dishes". Sorry about the glare :)

IMT: Family
I think that one of my favourite things to express in my art is gender roles and issues, specifically those involving women. And of course women face the issue of having a family, and then there is the problem of her role in the family.

I think that this is an attack on the ancient views of what a women should be: a beauty queen who can cook, clean, and will make babies and silently raise them - all without protest. Nothing more and nothing less. No thoughts, no opinions, no discussion. This image depicts the strong woman as she sees herself, but with the added voids that our grandfathers and great-grandfathers would have seen.

I completed this drawing about a week ago, but I feel it is very much appropriate for the theme of "Family".

Just for the record:
Personally, I have nothing against stay-at-home wives and mothers, so long as it was HER decision and she knows that she is able to do whatever she wants - without being ruled over by a dictatoral husband.

I'm actually rather pleased today because I received my school VAPD diary mark - which is a form of assessment - during today's art lesson. I got 93/100 :)

Venus Figurine

B & 4B pencil in VAPD

This week's Inspire Me Thursday prompt is "Umbrella".

Now, being the person that I am, I instantly thought of "Umbrella Terms" for some reason. I thought about what I understood this particular phrase to mean, and after doing a little research I found that I was correct. An "umbrella term" is a word used to describe a collective of similar objects or phenomena.

Being a member of the iGeneration - or Gen Y - I was bound to use Wikipedia for my "research". That's when I stumbled across a link and an umbrella term for a range of miniature prehistoric statues that depicted obese or pregnant women - "The Venus Figurines".

This drawing is an image not disimilar to any of the Venus Figurines. It too depicts the primal beauty of a voluptuous or pregnant female. This is an 'umbrella image', if you will.

Earth Mama

Watercolour pencil in VAPD, A4 size

Inspired by the IMT prompt: "Green". There's a little bit of glare from the scanner.

I know, strange interpretation.

And a strange prompt, actually. All these events in regards to the environment have been popping up in my life lately, and all within a period of less than five days:

Cleaning my room (well, that was a conscious decision) and consequently filling garbage bag after garbage bag with paper for recycling; a random entry for the Waste As Art competition through the mail, and then IMT has a prompt that in honour of Earth Day that will be occuring this week (April 22). I honestly never knew it was going to be Earth Day this coming Wednesday, which is why I am quite freaked out.

I wonder what the world has in store for me with all these hints.

Art News

More work in progress...

For a couple of weeks now I have been aware of something, but not blogged it. I just honestly haven't gotten around to it.

Next Monday & Tuesday I will be attending a workshop at the Newcastle Region Art Gallery (our local art gallery) - appropriately dubbed 'Art Castle' - at which I will create art works individually and collaboratively with the other selected senior high school students within the group. I had to submit a written application and attach a reference from my art teacher, as this is a "scholarship" (ie: a charity organisation - The Smith Family - has paid for our gallery time and the materials we utilise, in addition to the catering and any travel expenses we may come across).

I was lucky enough to be accepted to attend this workshop, as was another girl in my art class. At the end of the two-day period, we will hold a mini exhibition, where our families and friends will be invited to see. I had to sign a release form type thing. The Smith Family will be documenting our work through photographs and other media for their own purposes. That's a little scary. It's very, very, very exciting to have my work "shown". I will take photos of my artwork on these days, and of course photograph our "exhibition".

Another arts-related event I will be taking part in will be the Hunter Region "Waste As Art" 2009 competition, run by the Hunter Waste Education Group (HWEG). Yesterday, quite coincidentally as I'd just finished my big clean-up, I randomly received a letter addressed to me which contained an entry form for the competition. Strange, I thought. But then I thought about it some more... and am developing my concepts.

Waste As Art encourages artists of all ages within our community to create works using recyclable materials and found objects (though not organic waste materials such as animal or plant parts, as stated in the competition guidelines). It is free to enter the competition and all artworks submitted are exhibited. First place and runner-up money prizes are awarded in each of the competition's categories, in addition to "People's Choice" and "Judges' Highly Commended" awards, which also present a reasonable amount of cash. Again, I would have to sign a release form.

I'd really like to take part in Waste As Art, as I am with Art Castle, as it allows me to experience the art world more thoroughly - through both contributing to an exhibition and being amongst peers.

Other than all this I am still doing what I usually do. Except it is the school holidays! So I have alot more time to do what I usually do, and even more. I am also taking alot more photos, mainly influenced by my new use of flickr. I need to buy art supplies but.

More graphites and a couple more VAPDs will do nicely, but I'll have to purchase larger diaries than what I usually buy. For home-use I generally buy A4 sized diaries, but at school I have been using 11 " x 12 " - or whatever that funny inbetween size is - for the past 2 years. So, as a result I've become rather accustomed to using a larger scale VAPD and really hate it when I have to down-size. That's probably the reason why I have been using so many pages in my school diary. Seriously, I only have half a dozen pages left and as such I have almost completed this VAPD in 1 term. In the past I have never finished a school diary within one term, let alone one full year!

Old Spice

Old Spice - Mixed Media (watercolours, newspaper and pen & ink on paper)

This piece looks at people stuck in their particular little ways, and how this can ultimately impact on a person's perception of reality. The haystack and silo are drawn over newspaper which notes that this man is more worried about his crops and rural way of life than, say, politics and other current affairs. And of course he just spits any-bloody-where.

It's called "Old Spice", to keep in with the current IMT theme. I can just imagine him slapping on his deodrant every morning, but no shower, of course.

School Holidays! (+ Some Drawings)

Stuff from My School Bag :)

Japanese Girl

Renaissance Girl

Ribbon

Old Man

I'm quite glad it's the school holidays now. I'm one third through the Preliminary HSC course and it's going well... so far.

Some more drawings I have completed - although some aren't quite finished.

The top one was a study of 3 things we had in our school bags and it was done in the perhaps the second art class we had this year. Then there's an image of a Japanese girl - an appropriation of a photo by Sharon Lockhart - not really finished, but I just wanted to show it. Ha. The next is an appropriation of a painting by Renaissance painter Domenico Ghirlandaio (who shares my Dad's first name :D), in which I unintentionally gave the woman a receeding hairline. A ribbon. A mixed media featuring an old man - which is very much still a work in progress.

Drawing

Buddha-inspired - 4B graphite on art paper (in my school VAPD)

Nude - 4B graphite on art paper (in my school VAPD)

Here are some drawings I've done quite recently. The first is inspired by Buddhas and the second by Brett Whiteley's elongated paintings, drawings and sculptures of the female form.

At the moment I'm feeling most comfortable in drawing. It's always been something I've done since I was a little kid and I've noticed myself starting to shy away from painting and focusing mainly on this particular medium. I feel that I can get the most expression and my best technical ability out of graphites and pencils. Anything that I can do darrrrrk. I'm not aiming to portray a subject with photograph-like quality - that's what we've got photographs for, after all - but rather with a more distorted quality.


I really like cubism, and in particular, the 'soft' cubism works of Tamara de Lempicka really interest me. I supposed you could pick that in the first image. By the way, speaking of the amazing Australian artist Brett Whiteley (1939 - 1992), yesterday I went to my regional art gallery and saw an exhibition which showed his various 'periods'. It was really quite inspiring. We also saw ArtExpress at the same gallery, which focused on HSC students from my area which was very interesting. We saw an array of works in all different mediums - painting, mixed media, sculpture, ceramics, graphics, video. It was a pretty damn good day as a matter of fact.

Some Ink 'Drawings'

Here are some ink & brush 'drawings' that I've made recently. I absolutely adore the Australian artist Joy Hester (1920 - 1960) who used this medium frequently through out her career. You should check her out. I feel that her style has most definitely influenced how I draw people and my use of line.

Man 1 - ink & brush on paper

Man 2 - ink & brush on paper

Androgynous - ink & brush over graphite drawing on paper