Wev’e now moved into the top floor of the Dancing Man Brewery in the old part of the original city, its such a fantastic venue which started life as a medieval warehouse and has been a tax collection venue which at the time was in the form of wool hence the name of the wool house. It was also a sea life museum and originally housed many of the Titanic exhibits and is now as a listed building has been sensitively converted into independent brewery, pub and restaurant.
Category Archives: older work
I rarely sketch portraits but every now and again a subject engages me. Sometime ago I discovered some photographs of people living on the streets. The faces just had a story to tell and inspired me to start creating . Here is the first of what will probably be many.
Here and There exhibition now open for business
If you are anywhere near Portsmouth Hampshire Hampshire that you might want to pop into the ASPEX Art Gallery current exhibition http://www.aspex.org.uk/events/here-there-guildhall/
where you will see “My Journey” series on display.
Getting ready for Aspex Gallery artist exhibition “Here and now”
I just wanted to share that my Journey series original works are going to be exhibited at the Aspex -Guildhall Gallery in Portsmouth as part of the Here and There exhibition running from the 28th January to the 8th of March http://www.aspex.org.uk/events/here-there-guildhall/
As I rarely frame my works this is also an interesting experience for me as one of the requirements for displaying art work on walls is that they pieces need to be framed, so I am currently arranging for the canvases to be constrained within box frames an interesting experience .
Great tips on earning money as a artist
http://blog.artweb.com/how-to/exhibiting-your-work-part-1-getting-started/
I am often stumbling across great tips on promoting your artwork so I thought that I share this one with you
Keeping motivated , getting together with other creatives
It is often easy to become isolated during the creative process and if your not careful this can lead to the old creative block.This is very much the case when much of your income is derived from your creative work.
Well I don’t know about you but I have definitely gone this one at different times… so how to overcome this….. always a difficult one as we all create in different ways …. I am someone who always has a different project on the go be it creating my own work or facilitating creativity in others . It is so easy to spend so much energy on projects that you just simply exhaust your self self preservation kicks in and well.
Ive tried many different ways to get the creative brain cells working again from starting a creative diary to taking a rest then spending some time as a arts tourist , visiting gallerys , reading a good book going to see some live bands etc …. do something totally different from paint balling to rock climbing and testing your comfort threshold …….
On the upside once this has happened and you have come out the other side you realise that the best thing to do is to factor in some relaxation time when your head is next immersed in a project and allow yourself to do something totally different every now and again.
My solution is not to fight it just except that we all need down times the other thought is that you are totally reliant in your artistic endeavor to earn a wage
Creating textural based artworks 1
Many of my art works are quite textual in a appearance I love to work in layers, changing and adapting as it is created.
I am often asked how I create my work and although there is no one method I thought that I would start to share some of the methods I use with you.
The first approach links to building up a textual base.
Much of my naturalistic work is based on one at least one photograph that I have taken. I always use my own photographs for this style of working unless I am provided with images by a a client.
To complete more to follow soon
Kickstarting the creative flow
As with all creative processes it is very easy to become fixed in a particular style of working, what with deadlines and limited time around other creatives this is always a potential problem.It is interesting how by spending lots of time helping others to be creative can effect your own ability to let loose and explore your own creativity.
I wanted to explore this topic by taking part in activity’s that would allow me the time to free up my own creative nature and fortunately have been able to enroll on a free 3 week online course ,recently designed and created by a lovely fellow creative Jani Frank who has been through the same thought process herself and wanted to share this with others.http://janijellybean.blogspot.co.uk/
One of the questions that Jani posed on her blog is how you go about getting around creative blocks and creating anyway… one of the ways I find is to set myself a limited time period, I usually set aside a minimum time of 2- 3 hours, then try not to think about what I am going to do and just get on with it, the starting is often the hardest bit , don’t always expect to get going straight away just doing helps and before you know it will happen.
I have often started with a inspiration , a photograph that I have taken etc which has always been a good place for me and in the past I was often able to draw inspiration from my imagination.
With time constraints I have found that the my ability to create ideas from my imagination has been overtaken by this method of working and although useful I find myself considering how to free up the more exploratory side of my nature, hence my reason for joining Jani s course.
I have decided to share this journey with you and will be setting up a page to share my explorations
Update re my art exhibition at Greyladies Art Centre
Leave a reply
If you are reading this post because you have attended this exhibition I just wanted to say thank you for all of your support and kind comments.
Now into our 4th day I am glad to say that I have have had much interest and have sold my sunset seascape mentioned recently, to a lovely gentleman who had actually been to the place in Montenegro that the painting was based on.
We have all been having a great time and received some great feedback , it is always great speaking to other people especially when as in my case my work can often be interpreted in different ways.
Working on a new painting
I decided to start a new painting of a fish under water, recently water related paintings seem to be of interest to me. This is the first version once again I need to decide on which new colors to include as I want to make the image more fluid with more balance I will let you know how this goes
