sleeping on the job

I just read an old blog from 2013 and note that I am again - or worse - still in a similar place. I go around in circles. I have realisations and huge insights, think I know where I am going and then fall asleep - for years. Or go down a wrong track somewhere and get lost.

Yesterday I started getting rid of the last of the big PhD paintings. I was going to burn them in a big sacrifical pyre but gave them away to a good home instead. Today I found a plaster mould of a torso I have been storing carefully in a wooden box under the house for 8 years. As I was putting it in the car for a trip to the tip, it occurred to me that for most of my life I haven't been what I thought I was. I've been struggling with this outdated view of myself for a long time now. It's like I had this idea of an identity - someone I wanted to be - except it's not who I really am at all. 

The 'me' I wanted to be was a classical, traditional artist. I went to art school and for the first 2 years majored in sculpture. I did loads of figure drawing (in the 80s there was a lot of money around to pay models). I learnt how to make moulds and cast in bronze. I took myself off to the anatomy department at UWA to draw dead bodies and babies in jars - because I thought that's what I should be doing. It fit the blueprint. I even made my father complicit in the lie, and when I really think about it, I wonder if it was what he wanted me to be. I was good at sculpture, but switched to painting when I realised it was a lot of tedious work, time consuming and expensive if you needed a proper studio and foundry. I've never considered myself a good painter.

I painted on and off for years but my heart wasn't in it. I struggled like hell to complete the 2 x 2.4 metre square paintings for my PhD exhibition. It was during this debacle that I finally admitted to myself that I hated paint!! I don't like getting it all over me, it's hard to control and I don't even like the results very much. I'm not into texture and the nuances of colour so what's the point?

Taking on the illustration course was me finally admitting to myself that if I was any kind of artist at all, it was an illustrator. And I choose that title very deliberately, because I don't enjoy drawing as many artists do, for the sake of the medium. This is one aspect of my art practice in which I have been absolutely consistent - I don't do art for the sake of art. I do it because it has meaning and I want to say something. Art is in service to me, not the other way around.

So here I am again - grappling with identity but at this mature age, finally getting closer to some sort of realistic artistic identity. And then - it occurred to me today that I am none of the above. That identity is nothing to do with what one does in the material world. 

image: ©Dr Grafix, 'Deconstructivism', collage, watercolour & pen, 2015

don't tell me......

soul sickness

The archetypal 'feminine' is under siege on SO many levels. Guns are obvious masculine symbols. Domestic violence, specifically man-on-woman attacks and murders - have reached outrageous proportions. Mother Earth herself is being violated to the extent that human existence itself is threatened. I find it very hard to accept that planet earth is dominated by 'matter' and 'spirit' can go to hell. 

Dark times. 

meanwhile....

I love collage and I usually love rain, but I'm a bit over it now so can it please stop - just for a while?

inertia

'house portraits'

This is one of the drawings I am working on at the moment - a sample piece for a framer on the east coast who found me on Illustrator's Australia. We've negotiated a price and he will add this 'product' to his other framing services. I've called them 'house portraits' but I don't know how he will market them. He wanted the lines to be more 'wobbley' so I'm redrawing it on my light table, but it will probably be a compromise in the end. 

I'm not expecting to get a lot of work out of it - if any at all - but you have to put stuff out there. And sometimes it's just good to be drawing - anything!

developing 'style(s)'

As I impatiently await official confirmation that I've finished my concept illustration course - results, feedback and/or congratulations please - I've been feeling quite lost. This is nothing new. It's an awkward feeling you get when one big thing in your life has ended but the new big thing hasn't quite revealed itself - although there are strong indications. Being involved in study means dancing to someone else's tune (even when you are doing a PhD!) At the end of it you are thrown out into the real world with a whole lot of new ideas and nobody to guide you through the transition. I don't like being in a state of suspension like this but unfortunately I accept I will have to hover for a while until I can clarify what the next step is.

My long time-fantasy plan is to get the occasional job doing illustration work. But it's a competitive field and very difficult to get your first break. I did my research and joined Illustrators Australia but because I am unpublished, can only get a student membership. Which - when you've been drawing forever - kind of sucks. On the other hand, I can understand it because I haven't really consolidated my style as an illustrator. I've had 2 enquiries via this website already so it's well worth the membership fee. One enquiry may lead to some work in the future. It seems that getting published is the second biggest hurdle for an illustrator, the first is developing and refining a style.

The Association of Illustrators is another organisation I will join when I have more pieces in my illustration folio. I think they are located in Britain. AOI don't discriminate between published and unpublished illustrators, but they want 8 pieces and they probably should be in the same style. I will also contact the Style File at some stage too, though they seem to stick to a limited style of work.

The illustration course really helped hone my skills in representational digital drawing as the image below should testify. I love doing this type of illustration but it is probably more suited to the 3D game industry. That's not to say book publishers wouldn't use it, but they do seem to favour less modelled, more stylised illustrations - like the image below it.  

Both 'potential' clients had responded favourably to the style above. The feedback I got from Illustrators Australia was very helpful: 

I think your work is strong, though it is interesting to see two distinct styles that (to my eyes) seem so unalike - there certainly is an argument that showing diversity is important, though I think it is equally important to show the kind of work you would like to be commissioned to do. Personally I find the flat / outlined / coloured work to be quite vibrant and fun and could imagine it attracting a lot of attention. The more tonal painting style is, on the other hand, something that is widely done by others so you might have some trouble "standing out", but of course if you are interested in working in gaming etc, then this is the type of work you should show....Your work has psychedelic elements - perhaps that could be an underlying factor that brings your work together when working with the different styles.

I remember battling a similar 'style-war' while I was writing my thesis. There came a point at which my supervisor started talking about 'voice'. It was time to commit. I tried out a couple of different writing styles which she critiqued harshly, and finally settled on something that was natural and unforced - which is what she was after of course (she certainly was a brilliant 'no bullshhit, take no prisoners' kind of academic). I have also reverted to some advice I give my own students - follow the passion, that is, find out what it is you love doing, and what feels right, because the love of what you do keeps you going through the tough times.

But what if you love 2 things at the same time? I love line and flat colour, but I also love indulging my newfound honing of chiaroscuro. Especially because I think it would be a great way to do some satirical works, like this, which I really need to get back to, but I'm distracted by other concerns at the moment.

At this point I can still see the value in developing the 2 styles, but I've confirmed what I suspected (from Googling other illustrators of course): I need to keep them separate on my website so as not to confuse people, and display them separately on different online forums. I'll keep my Artstation folio for the 3D modelled stuff, and pursue other forums for the linework and flat colour.

This self analysing has made me realise I haven't really done enough work in developing my linear style, so that's what I'll do first so I can get my portfolio together - stuff like the first image, and this one below:

But I will also develop some more 'positive', dreamlike images, like this reworking of an old oil painting, because a lot of the work on Artstation is quite heavy and depressing.

Redoing this one is a clear indicator of just how much I have learnt in 18 years, and how, although I've officially stopped studying, I'll never really stop learning.