Dear Bryan
Thanks for bearing with the computer problems I was having at the start of our hangout for the third part of the course. When I posted the assignment I was pleased with the amount of work that was in the portfolio and also pleased that there were one or two bits in it that were quite good.
The blind drawings for Project 1 were interesting but were perhaps not carried to a finite conclusion there is a sense of doing and ticking a box rather than a complete investigation.
You, like I, was pleased with the change in my practice initiated by the stick drawings in project 2, drawing at the easel and using more of my body in my mark making, the drawings are now a record of a performance piece where I have danced at the easel. I think the music helped to bring this out but I was especially impressed by the photographs of Cezanne light footed before his easel. It has given the drawings a sense of airiness and space that they somehow lacked before. Pollock is famous for his dancing around his paintings maybe I need to take the drawings off the easel and put them on the floor and dance around them as if they were my handbag, steady lad you don’t have a handbag.
My series thing is Girls at the Bar, there is a painting in there somewhere, but it isn’t there yet, they will take a further bow in part 4 when hopefully they will be finally resolved. For series, you quoted Jim Dines, Roger Hutton and Morandi, from a quick look on the internet, I think Amazon will be delivering a Jim Dines book sometime soon, I have Morandi books already.
Project 3 was where I became Butada’s creator, I made her, I named her, I curated her drawings, and then became jealous of her success, her Giotto curves and her freewheeling attitude to creativity. I tracked her down, turning her drawings into believable aspects of realities that even she could not imagine and lived deep inside of me. You were glad of my interaction and collaboration with her but felt I was ticking boxes rather than pushing the game to its absolute limits.
Project 4 was perhaps my greatest success, the drawing of my tigress was part inspired by a double visit to the once in a lifetime exhibition of Raphael’s drawings, coupled with my new found drawing practice of drawing at arm’s length, brought the project work to a successful conclusion. Being aware of my mood when I am drawing was not something I used to think about and I can see now how I can induce my mood to suit the subject or mood of my drawing.
The assignment piece allowed me to incorporate many of the techniques I had practiced in the earlier part of the course.
The sketch that you picked out from the moleskin sketchbooks was one I did in a Venetian restaurant with particularly slow service, I will take that as a nudge to do some more considered work in my moleskin sketchbooks.
I really enjoyed this part of the course and had lots of fun doing the work but the interaction and collaboration aspect of my work is as you predicted getting stronger and I am interacting with more things and different types of stimulation which in turn is I think making me more creative, it is like a win win thing and is resulting, I think, in better end results.
I think the work in progress shots and breaking down the work into visible steps is letting you see my process more and over this part of the course my sketchbook work has influenced my other work in a much more positive way.
My background reading is going well and in informing my work and I feel in the written pieces that I am coming to grips with being critical of my own work if only in a positive way.
With regard to a submission date for the next assignment I think if we leave it until mid-December it will give me the time to get a substantial amount of work done on the parallel project and the critical review.
All the best
Mickos
Dear Cleo 