Heart Collage Zoom Workshop Aftermath

 We had a great group last Friday for the Valentine Card Workshop. I'll do it again next February. Here are just a few of the pieces made by participants.

All of these are small, greeting card size. It's a great format for exploring contrasts in color, value, and pattern. How do you make an image lively without making it 'too busy'? Where is the line between visual excitement and visual confusion? How simple can you make an image and still maintain a sense of excitement or mystery? 

Hope you all had a good Valentine's Day!

Valentine Card Workshop on Zoom

Actually, it is a workshop on elements of abstract visual language, disguised as one on making valentine cards. Get details and sign up here. Friday, February 10, 4:00 pm - 5:30 pm Eastern time. All who sign up will get the recording, so if that time is not convenient, you can still get the workshop.

 

 

Commitment to Process - Getting UN-Stuck

Commitment to process is an important key to getting unstuck. We have a habit of focusing on results, setting expectations, and making judgements accordingly. We want to know how things will turn out; we want to avoid uncertainty by planning, so that we get it ‘right’. While this habit of planning for results is essential for most activities in our lives (I don’t dispute the value of planning!), it does seem to be one of the main reasons that we get stuck as artists.  

 

Making some marks, the first layers, with no plan.

Of course we can plan out a painting go through the steps, and get the result we expect. Some people can. When I try to do this my result is not satisfying. I feel like I've missed it, and the painting looks - and is - superficial. At times in my early painting career I tried following instructions in a book. I knew instinctively that it would not result in something that felt authentic, but allowing the benefit of the doubt and figured I'd learn something. I didn't. Well, I did learn that I was right about it not feeling authentic. Following step-by-step instructions that focused on a particular result was not a satisfying endeavor. It lacked something essential to making real art. Does this sound familiar?

 

For me it takes periodic RE-commitment to process to stay connected authentically with my work. The tendency towards planning and results orientation is tenacious, and it creeps up unnoticed until I get stuck. I have a few tricks for getting back into my groove:

I am offering a short Zoom session on 5 Ways to Get UN-Stuck to share with you my favorite practices that get me back to a focus on process. See details and sign up here.

 

Painting 'parts' that I will use in collage.

"Letting Loose", mashing things together

Trying to put together an awkward arrangement

Making a bunch of marks with my fingers

Interview with Louise Fletcher

I had the honor and pleasure of doing an interview with Louise Fletcher for her Art Tribe subscribers. You can see it below. Louise co-hosts, with Alice Sheridan, the Art Juice Podcast. Check it out! Enjoy the interview. Thanks for visiting.

More Thoughts on Composition

 I have been thinking a lot about composition lately because it is one topic that most of my students ask about. "When do you worry about composition?",  "Is it a composition?", "What about the Rule of Thirds?", "It is pleasing to the eye, but is it a good composition?"

The questions beg other questions. 

• Why worry? I don't worry, I just compose. That is the process, and it involves trying things, changing them, painting over things, suggesting something to the painting and then seeing if the painting accepts it or not. Composing is constant hypothesizing and questioning. Trying things, editing, revising, building, deconstructing. This is composing.
  
• How can marks on a page not be a composition? "These I just made, followed your instructions; this other one I tried to make a composition".  Comment from a student in a recent workshop, not uncommon. They are all compositions. You have composed all of them.
  
•  What if you don't apply the Rule of Thirds, whatever that is? Anything that calls itself a rule is begging to be challenged. Try out the opposite, or something different from, the rule in question. SEE what happens, rather than just taking the rule as a Rule.
  
•  Pleasing to whose eye? "Pleasing to the eye" is often used to mean "I like it". Own your personal taste. Don't project onto others. To me, "pleasing to the eye" suggests that the artist is trying to please an audience. It's great when people like your work, but what matters most is that your work  speaks to you. Then you know it is your work, and what you send out into the world is real.
  

Below are two pieces that I will be demonstrating in my Technique Takeaway, Composition as Process.

This 90-minute demonstration and discussion is online, via ZOOM, hosted by Winslow Art Center. 

Friday, August 27

5:00 - 6:30 Eastern Time, 2:00 - 3:30 Pacific Time

Sign up here.

I will walk you through my compositional process on the above two pieces and more. This is not an analysis of the finished pieces themselves, but a peek into my thoughts on composition as I am composing. The above two pieces are paintings. I will be including at least one collage piece as well, so you can learn how I think through that process as well. There will be intermittent Q&A during this demonstration. If you can't make it to the live ZOOM event, sign up anyway and you will get access to the video. Find out more here.

Here is What a Zoom Workshop Looks Like

 I did a Zoom workshop on Professional Practices for the Artist, which did not involve any art-making, just lecture, discussion, writing, Q&A. Easy squeezy. Then, though Port Townsend School of the Arts, I taught a workshop called Time to Paint. Three days of Zoom interaction: demonstration, painting/drawing/collaging, and then looking at work, offering feedback, Q&A, etc. Here are a few pix:

Me with a demo piece

Everyone, almost, holding up their art

Mary Anne's dog with Mary Anne

My dog, Pearl, had to get into the shot.

We're all finding new ways of doing what we do. Zoom is a great tool for learning, but I'm still trying to find a combination of platforms that will facilitate teaching and learning in better ways.