Discipline

It's something I lack. I'm not a slacker, it's just I get distracted easily, and never find/make the time to follow projects through. So this year I want to get my butt in gear with regards to art.

I have a number of threads I'd like to follow but, to start with, I'm setting myself a small, attainable goal, rather than making a huge list and getting overawed by a mammoth task.
So, here is the list -

That should keep me busy for a week or so, and I'm going to set up my art stuff on the kitchen table, as retreating to the garage in this cold weather is not going to be an option.

Other smaller tasks in between time -

Read Casey's Pastel entry on plastic colour - why doesn't he use green in trees?

Read through the Art Calender post on overcoming the fear of the blank canvas, to identify what my sticking points are.

Catch up on the other artist's blogs I follow.

David Hockney - I'm excited

Some months ago I saw David Hockney's documentary 'A Secret Knowledge' and it changed my world, for a short time. As I tend to do, I immediately rang my dad, then my older sister who is getting into Art, and raved about it for about an hour each. If you've never seen it, David identified links in the way artists used to depict the world in their pictures, and then identified a fundamental change. He goes on to discover the secret science behind that change.

Apart from opening my eyes to pictures I'd only ever glanced at for years as an art student, it showed me how passionate Hockney is about works of art, and about the making of art. He was intelligent, down to earth, passionate, excitable even. This was a guy I wanted to learn more about.

Jump forward to this Christmas and I get a book about David Hockney from said sister, Mel. The foreword alone by Paul Melia dn Ulrich Luckhardt was full of ideas and questions before I'd got to page 9. My mind already buzzing, I flicked through images of Hockney's work and saw the journey he'd taken. Then I stopped dead on page 155, a drawing of a Van Gogh-esque woven yellow chair, drawn with an altered perspective. He explains "In the theory of one-point perspective the vanishing point is infinity and the viewer is an immobile point outside the picture. If the infinite is God, we never connect, but if perspective is reversed the infinity is everywhere, infinity is everywhere, infinity is everywhere and the viewer is now mobile (is this better theologically?)."

This alteration in perspective grabs me and holds me. I know it's wrong but there seems to be some kind of truth to what he's trying to portray here. I am mad? There's potential here for me to investigate. It ties in the with 'Trudging' image I've been playing with for a while which depicts an altered perspective of a pavement and the buildings rising up on either side.

Destination Panorama

Happy New Year to everyone. I hope you all had a lovely time over Christmas. Apologies for not posting until now. There's no particular reason for the gap. More like a number of reasons such as Christmas preparations, family time, visitors and visiting, and then bedding back into the school-work-home routine in the New Year.

As you know, I'm part of an International Moleskine Exchange, which is almost at it's close, with most of the Moleskine's nearly full now. I've been naughtily sitting on this Moleskine since November 08, the subject of which is Maps and Destinations. I knew as soon as I received it and saw the other's work what I wanted to do - the possible destinations reached by the road outside my house, including the bus stop I often use and draw figures at. This is a sneak preview, as part of the Moley agreement was not to post the full image until it's been received by the next person on the list. So you'll have to wait a little longer before you see the full panorama.