Cath Sheard Art

Tag: process

  • Work in progress – rose

    It’s not often I do anything that involves lots of layers of glazing, but I thought it was time to do something different, something a little slower. Have you read about slow food, slow cloth, slow whatever? It’s all about taking your time, savouring the process, using your process like meditation. That’s what this painting is like for me; a slow, meditative process where I put some glazed colour on, look and think, put some more on, look and think…

    I decided to paint a close-up of a rose because it gives me quite distinct areas of tone and colour, and because the definite form means I hopefully won’t drift off into abstract land on this one. I found a free photo of a rose on the net and printed it out.  I covered the back in pastel, taped it to my canvas and then used a sharp pencil to transfer the main lines onto my canvas.

    I have done quite a few layers so far and, at this stage, it looks very crude and altogether too ‘obvious’ for my liking. But as I go through the layers I will soften both the edges and the colors. Hopefully I’ll arrive at something I can enjoy. We’ll see!

    001

  • Looking forward to 2009

    Some of us in the NZ Art Guild have been looking back at our art goals for 2008, and thinking ahead to 2009. I did reasonably well on my ’08 goals; some are ongoing and well enough entrenched as to be habits now. Others turned out to be “not such good ideas” and have been left behind. So what have I decided on as my goals for 2009. The short version is:

    1. A body of paintings that hangs together around a theme or process (don’t know what yet).

    2. A small body of textile work to exhibit as a whole.

    3. Some charity work so I can give back.

    4. To market myself more systematically.

    Here’s the expanded version – with the where’s and whys:

    1. A body of paintings that hangs together around a theme or process (don’t know what yet). This is the big one for the year. As it says, I don’t know yet what it is that will bring cohesion, but I do know that cohesion is what I need form my work this year. A body of work that I can hang in one place, and one time, and have it say “one artist did this and it works”. How hard can it be!

    2. A small body of textile work to exhibit as a whole. I am planning a series of experimental work with TLC tutor and artist Trisha Findlay. We’ve yet to work out the details but essentially we’re talking about a monthly challenge with a view to exhibiting the work at the end of the process. And speaking of process, the challenge is likely to be around process, not size, or subject etc.

    3. Some charity work so I can give back. This is about donating the occasional work to charity auctions etc. Not too much or too often, but enough to know I am giving back. Why not too much or too often? Think about this – when do you think was the last time your accountant or mechanic was asked to donate his time and materials to a charity auction? Yet artists are not big earners to start with…

    4. To market myself more systematically. I do some marketing but it is a bit haphazard. I need to think it through more, be more systematic; less scatter-gun, more bulls eye!

    Have you been thinking about what you did in 2008? Do you have any goals in mind for 2009? I’d love to hear your thoughts on either, or both.

  • Mark making and working loose

    Yep, more in the “working loose and having fun” series. It feels so good to be back to mark making – something we explored extensively in the first year of my art course, must be five years back now. I studied with the Learning Connexion here in New Zealand, extramurally, for four years. In the end I completed an Advanced Diploma of Art & Creativity (Honours). It felt like such an achievement, and really pushed me to learn new things. Anyway…

    Having moved away from mark making to all kinds of other processes, I have come full circle. And yet I am not back where I started from. I am back to the same technique, but with a very different end result, and am loving it. I regularly check Katherine Tyrrell’s blog Making a Mark here; she writes in depth about mark making and has great links to blogs of interest.

    So expect to see a bit more of this style for now, especially as Katherine Tyrrell’s recent post on working in series really got me thinking about working more consistently on one theme. Mark making – like coming home after a long day at work, it just feels good.

  • More circles

    Just continuing on with mark making and abstraction. On a 4×4″ canvas – loving this size.

  • Playing “what if?”

    A good photocopier is a wonderful tool for artists. I have some photos of the moon, seen through long grass, that I use over and over again. Every now and then I spend some time and money playing with our work photocopier. At only $1 for a colour copy, it’s a bargain.

    Playing with the photocopier means thinking about things like; how would this look as a negative? With the saturation turned right up? With the green turned right down?  Black and white with very high contrast?

    Recently I copied a dozen pages of the same three photos. This picture is just one photo of the three on a page – so for only $12 I have 36 reference images. Cool, I hear you say, but why not just mess round in Photoshop?  Well, I do that too, but there’s something about seeing the immediate result come out of the copier, and then adjusting my choices accordingly, that is more satisfying and useful to me than only seeing the image on screen.