Positive news

Lo and behold, for the first time in the history of this blog I won't complain or whine about things...

A few days ago I finally managed to build up enough confidence to volunteer to exhibit my work at a gallery connected to the school. I only have three paintings (well, make that two, I'm still working on the third) so I'll have to be joined by several others. I don't know how many have volunteered yet but I hope it'll all work out. If nothing comes out of it at least I'll know I dared to volunteer in the first place.

I finished a painting yesterday that I hope to include in the exhibition and I will add it to the website by the end of the week hopefully.

It had to happen at some point...

...I had an idea. I worked on it for nearly two months: I struggled, I lost track of what I was doing, I found my way again, struggled some more and eventually it all plummeted.

Some ideas are obviously not meant to be.

You don't need to be a brain surgeon to figure that out, to know that you won't succeed in every little thing in life, but still - when I realised that what I had been working on for the past few months was never going to result in anything, I was very disappointed.

Ok, I was depressed, I'll admit that. I felt like I'd practically wasted my time and that nothing I ever did would turn out well.

But a few days ago I actually had several new ideas, started sketching right away and I'll start working on this new project this week. I'm actually very positive about this, which surprised me cause I'm the self-proclaimed queen of negativity (if you don't believe me, read my oldest blog posts.....) I really thought that the failed project would have a bigger impact on me. Let's see how long I can keep this positivity up..

By the way, I'm working on updating my web site too, only I had to rebuild it in Dreamweaver (which I've never used before) so it's a little harder than expected. But I'm almost finished so watch out for it in the coming weeks!

Update!

It's been almost 2 months since my last post so I guess I owe you an update. I already mentioned I wasn't accepted into the Academy (boohoo) but I was accepted into another art school (yay) that's pretty much at the same level as the one I used to go to but with a whole different system and teaching methods. So I'm officially going back to being an art student!

In the last week of June and first week of July I was in Florence, Italy and it was just great. Not only is there art all around you; famous paintings inside the churches, great architecture, and of course the Uffizi (which was overbooked though so we didn't get to go), but we also saw some exhibitions of more modern, contemporary art. One of the last days of the trip we went to Siena and in the middle of the busy, tourist-crowded street there was a tiny gallery and one of the artists in particular appealed to me: Her name is Antonella Cinelli, and her paintings are very inspired by photos - both in terms of composition and technique - and the motives of her paintings for that exhibition were focused around femininity: Shoes, underwear, make-up, and portraits of women (possibly herself?) doing everyday activities such as putting on socks or pulling up her pantyhose. I guess you have to see it yourself to understand why it's interesting. The series/exhibition was called "Femminile, singolare...concreto".

The trip to Italy also inspired me to take my own photos as a source of inspiration to my paintings, instead of using film stills. After I made that decision I started taking a lot of photos of the streets, the people around me, people talking to each other, people waiting for the bus, or just wainting in general.

I've been home for a few weeks now so I've started on some paintings with some of those photos in mind.

I suppose I should have taken one picture of each of them but truth is I'm a little scared right now cause it feels like I have no idea what I'm doing.. and my self confidence is still not back to normal after the application refusals so I don't think I can take much criticism. I'm trying to find a liberating side to not knowing what I'm doing though...turning it into a good thing.

For the past year I've been worrying on and off about losing my technique and ability to draw and paint people (I miss 'croquis' sessions!!).. one of the things I've always struggled with is to draw and paint hands, whenever I try it looks like a big fleshy thing with sausages randomly attached to it. So I invested in this:

It's supposed to make it easier to draw hands. It works to a certain extent; the thumb can't be moved further from the hand than what is seen in the photo, and the fingers are too long. But it's fun, I've filled half a sketching pad with hand drawings already. I've named "him" Han(d)ibal. (it may seem obsessive to name ones art tools but we have a history for it in my family. It started when my sister got a similar wooden doll to draw and we all thought it looked like the Academy Award statue so it was named Oscar.)

That's about all at the moment, will add the two latest paintings (those I did before the ones I'm working on now) to the web site shortly.

...."Untitled"

(It sounds very posh considering it's just a roundabout way of saying you can't think of a title..)



Fact is I haven't been very active in terms of art lately. After having received three letters of refusal from art academies in just as many days, I sank into that famous deep black hole for a few days. I thought about giving up - there's nothing as nerve-wrecking as putting your life on hold like this and not even knowing whether it will ever be worth it or if you're just wasting precious years of your life. So my self confidence is currently just starting to emerge from a mud-pool of self pity, and there's no telling if it'll go right down again tomorrow.. so I'm clinging to the idea that I'll make it somehow and someday, it'll just be another year or so. It's not easy.



Because of that I haven't been very productive, but yesterday I tried to make an effort to start painting again and came up with this:



What was I thinking? I'm just coming out of a creative drought (or depression) and so I try to paint two paintings at once. Integrated into each other... I have no idea how this will turn out but I have to say I'd be sad if I work long and hard on this project and it ends in disaster - A painting that's been overdone and with too many layers of paint, or in general something I'd be embarassed to associate my name with (That actually happens a lot).

I did finish a painting about a month ago that I'm sort of pleased with but haven't come round to uploading it to the web site yet - just give me a few days!

Not AGAIN...!

It seems I can't use GoLive to update my web site anymore.. The alternative is Dreamweaver and I have no idea how it works. (I tried and suddenly it had made a Dreamweaver site folder of all my web sites into one...) So I'm very embarassed to say, sorry for not updating the web site in a while, AGAIN. I get the feeling I say that a lot. I have applications for two more schools to finish and I'll try to figure out what to do with the web site(s) after that.

That said, I started a new painting yesterday, it's going to be part of a series of two paintings so it doesn't look very impressive on its own:

It was a good opportunity to test my new digital camera though. I was never really happy with the old one, especially when I was going to take photos of my works for documentation, so it was a nice change. It has a so-called "intelligent" flash, which I think is great.

I just realised that the person in the painting looks a lot like my sister, even though it's not. Strange.

Why is it that....

...a painting always looks like CRAP when you first start working on it??

I was always told that the process is just as valuable as the result, but it's very tempting to skip right to the result when you think you've done a day's decent work and realize you've merely created something that looks like a kindergarten project. Maybe that's why it's so hard to "admit" that this is what my new painting looks like. I did have a great time taking the newest addition to my paint brush collection for a test ride though. (as shown to the right) It's a real beaut and probable the most expensive paint brush I've ever owned.

By the way, as you've probably noticed, my web site is now up again. Feel free to leave comments and write in the guestbook; I'm thankful for any feedback.

A nearly finished self portrait

Just needs a few adjustments.

It's gonna feel so good to not see a copy of my own face staring back at me first thing in the morning!