Bristol Expo 2009.

Had a fantastic weekend at Bristol International Comic Expo & the Small Press expo 2009. Though smaller than previous years, the atmosphere was great and it was wonderful as ever to catch up with all my favorite comics creators. Most of the highlights involve shameless namedropping or anecdotes which are unrepeatable. 

I had my Hi Ex hat on & am really pleased with the positive feedback from everyone, It looks like we'll have an awesome guest list for 2010 ! some Big big names in there.
I've also got a long list of comics projects which i will need to get done FAST!

I managed to get some con sketches which i'm usually too busy to do...

Wolverine by Laurence Campbell

Rorschach by John Higgins.

Shakey Kane.Steve Sampson. Dave Gibbons.

Paul Grist - the Eternal champion

painting more firefighting today, got bogged down with a big one, so by way of interlude is a doodle, the game was to use only a brush, no pens.

heres a canvas painting done a couple of years ago, i've just got around to scanning it in.

'Going into Smoke'

todays finished painting, I'm trying to get a less laboured look, so forcing myself to work faster & bypass my irritation at details. I've got another 3 big ones and 2 canvases on the go in this set. 

Naming them is a strange one, trying to avoid scary, dramatic, technical or jargon words - ' 'Donning preceedures according to TB1/97' or 'Fearless Heros brave the dry ice machine', might not work so well....

Firey paintings.

This is me starting the marathon run of firefighting paintings for this summers exhibitions. A couple of small ones to ease me in. these are both 21cm wide.

I particularily loved doing the smokey flamey bits in the second one, I wish I could get away with a more expressive abstract style, instead of having to make things look so recognisable, but thats another day another market.
I tend to work more than one painting at once, so I can alternate while wet layers dry. On bigger pieces this is less of a problem as i can just move to another part.
two down, 6 big ones to go- yipes !

Sundays adventure in colouring.

getting prettysick of highland cows so back to girl & wolf. must take time to sketch more ravens & crows, they want to join in the adventures but i havent got a feel for them yet. Meanwhile, more pressing is the need to produce painted paintings for summer exhibitions, i'm just working my way up to it, honestly.

Heiland Coos.

 Too ill with the cold ( swine flu ) to function properly, so messing on photoshop so i don't implode with non-working guilt. playing with how to get textured coloured layers built up, after much ado found the most ergonomic method, basically pencil sketch scan, duplicate 'lighten', colour lines, 'multiply', then lasso areas cut & fill with bits of paintings & scribble over top...sort of.  Now wheres my lemsip.

applecross paintings

The View from Sands beach as seen in 'Monty Halls Great escape' on BBC. 

The famous 'Bealach Na Ba' high pass over to Applecross, the highest road in the UK and stunning. Scary in a 12.5 tonne fire appliance !

Both these paintings are 36cm x 25cm, acrylic paint, i'll get them framed & up for sale asap.

Flyer design

 for a Theatre company
www.ragearts.org.uk

I'm still un-happy with what happens as soon as I ink things, maybe i should miss out this step & just opt for a scribblier pencil & paint approach?  can only work this out by doing more !

everything but painting

There just isnt enough hours in the day! I lost a lot of April with holidays, broken vehicles,computer repairs, hobbling feet & family stuff - now its a major catch up which means I've been working a minimum of 15 hours a day. I've been trying to get enough stock of crafty bits for all the shops & sales, but it tends to take over from the painting.

 Once the process is started I have to see it through, especially with pottery which is drying out too fast as I type.

 Its also frustrating as life has been emotional recently and this translates into pictures in my head which I'm keen to get out. Back to work!

Comic papermache bowls in progress

leafy bowls drying out too fast.

a light portable folding cardboard display stand for prints, not a straight line in sight! genius.

Hi Ex dates 2010 !

We've got a few guests & exhibitiors already, looking forward to catching up with people at theBristol Comic Expo in two weeks . A lot depends on funding for the next HiEx, so I will be busy with applications over the summer. fingers crossed, it would be awful to have to downscale it when everyone enjoys it so much.

Is it Art though?

well of course it is !  heres my latest tattoo, gore n all, fresh & painfull. I've been wanting this design for YEARS, but haven't had the time, money or tattooist. Its based on a pazyryk design as are some of my other tattoos, I added embellishments to the design and it was beautifully done and tweaked to fit by the talented & lovely Calum McWilliam at http://www.tattooswhileyouwait.com 

Crafty Bits.

April is being a very challenging month, damaged feet, no transport, broken computers, being away for family stuff all seems to be mounting up against me! However, I have rushed to get some craft items finished & out in the shops. Enjoying doing pottery again, even though I can only manage small items in my unpredictable little raku kiln, avoiding the worst of the weather & firing outside. As well as the items above I've been doing beads, buttons, pendants, and leafy bowls with melted glass.

have been selling original art & prints, desperately need time to get some more done for this summers exhibitions! ( got up at 4am today to try & catch up...seriously, its mad ! )

I haven't blogged in a while as I'm never sure which bit of my complex life to share where, however i feel a new spring clarity so shall stick art wafflings up here. Inane gibberish on facebook and portfolio at www.balnacra.com.

I've been surging forward with art projects recently, moving steadily on multiple fronts. I've been frustrated that there seems so many disparate elements, and asking why why why do i do what i do & what is it that I actually do? which direction should i focus on?

I have to make craft items to fill the local shops for the sudden rush of tourists; firefighter paintings for some exhibitions this year; touristy paintings both landscape paintings and more quirky highland coo type things. I've held off with comic strip work as i don't like the way it comes out & have been trying to let a more fluid natural style of line work develop, playing with ink, paint & photoshop, i wish there was more time to experiment.

The wee girl is wearing big boots in sympathy to my feet pain, she needs to watch those laces with that big heavy sword though.

frustratingly we've had some computer trouble & now photoshop isn't working properly, however there's 3 trillion other things to do so ever onwards !

feedback is welcome as I wilt in a vacuum!

second pic of the day, on a photoshop learning curve, this one was from pencil sketch, previous was an inked drawing.
How come I'm more productive when I'm not supposed to be working ?

another wintery pic. playing with photoshop.

Sometimes, wether through my job as a firefighter, a young Carer support worker, or just the horrible awfulness of grown up reality, I have to deal with some stark & harrowing nastiness, I have to see things that are not good for an artist to see, for anyone to see. My brain is a very visual brain, pictures in there. I am torn wether to express the bad things in art, or fight it & steer towards nice fluffy happy things. I have a story in my head, my magnum opus, which is aTarentino-esque trainspotting 18 rated psycho roadmovie ( comic?), I place a lot of bad things that happen in reality into that story... will I ever draw it ?

One of my main characters that I generally draw is the wee girl & her wolf friend. Recently I had to see, & take to the police, a set of photographs with little small young girls in. Small children, dirty, laughing, sleeping, playing in a room full of drugged up junkies, needles & spliffs. I just have to have faith that social work & police will do their job, but experience tells me otherwise. All I could draw for days was gaunt ghost eyed toddlers with a harrowing future in front of them ... not good.

 However a few nights insomnia on photoshop & i've broken through to better images, the wee girl's playing again & winter is here. Stand by more non-nasty pictures.

We watched 'Into the wild' last night. I've been listening to the sound track by Eddie Vedder since it came out & loved the moving magical warm freedom they evoked... cruel Eddie had been lulling me into a false feel-good sing-a-long there.

I don't read reviews & do my research much on films I just wanted to watch it as I imagined it was something about a journey & freedom, the poetic if naive perceptions of youth. That wanderlust is something I relate to, though I am old now & rooted to my comfort zone, I once had very itchy feet & needed to run. Of course life has taught me you can't stand still if you want to, the winds of events will buffer & batter regardless.

I never really did live the road movie, but I touched it, I guess the resposibility of young children at a young age kept pulling me back to earth. Now I don't want to run, I just wish it would stand still for a minute!

Why did the film have such an effect ? because it was beautifully made? because Emile Hirst with his crazy hair & boys beard reminded me of my son before he left? because someone elseI love  has been living rough? because its about a parents loss, the not knowing , the fears, the guilt, that pain that only a parent can feel ? because of my own younger selfs' need to escape, to run, to declutter & de materialise my life. Us grown ups know that " happiness is only real if it is shared" but sometimes its a long journey to understand this.

at 20 I put up my art college degree show, announcing on the day the marks came out to shocked tutors that I was expecting my second baby. gave away all my bedsit furniture, My landlord was putting up the rent, coincidence that I wouldn't go out to 'dinner' with him ? I gave my notice; packed the morris traveller I'd bought with maternity benefits; stole some builders plastic sheeting & headed to Rosyln Glen, now famous from 'the da vinci code'. There were some 'druid' friends of mine camped there for the solstice, I built a crude shelter & lived there a couple of weeks with my toddler son, after that I headed into perthshire & lived in a hut far off the road, then a 6 week road tour of Brittanys stone circles.. and so on... Like Chris McCandless in the film, I felt that society was all wrong, all materialistic, greed, war, pressure to conform, I felt it crush me, I needed to find something simple that made sense, like the trees, tides, rocks & the sky. 

In later years hanging out with 'hippies', 'travellers', 'dropouts' etc going on the road as often as possible, I realised they weren't creating something new, it was the same old crap, only more chaotic, violent & unstable, mere survival gave no room for creativity, & I needed to create. So I settled, lost all these transient hypocritical 'friends' & raised my kids as best I could. That was a long time ago now.

One day I'll weave these stories into another story, the deaths, the madness, the laughter, the adventures the badness & goodness of other people. But right now I need to shake off the emotional aftermath of that film, hug my loved ones, & get on with work. Tonight I vote we watch something up-beat, with exploding helicopters.

I'm quite exited about the latest Firefighting paintings I'm doing & would love to post a sequence of progress photos, how ever the last two pictures are gifts, hence surprises for firemen, so it would spoil the whole thing. There's a wee watercolour , I'll tell you the story once the fireman in question has received it. The one I'm working on the moment is a portrait in action, on canvas for a retirement present. Its been one thing painting my own crew in action, but its quite a privilege painting these other chaps, we're a diverse bunch us firefighters & there's a world of difference between whole timers & us retained, and yet the brotherhood thing is really strong, hard to explain. I guess the intensity of experience we go through is something we can't really describe, even if i had to leave the fire service tomorrow, its touch lasts for ever. The sweat, tears, laughter, crackle & roar of flames, smash of glass, crunch of metal, acrid smoke burning lungs, adrenalin clarity & slow motion ultra focus.

I've been sent some great photos from other colleague's I can't wait to paint. thanks guys & keep them coming ! meantime here's something i can show you... stand by for more.

public face private face...integrity & art
Current mood:  calm

I have a moral conundrum, i believe in being honest & open, breaking barriers between people by sharing, being true to myself, all the pain & misery & suffering that everyday people go through seems to me to be exaserbated by the taboos about talking about it, its not dignified, its embarrassing, people don't want to know about your problems, one has to suffer silently, keep up appearances, stiff upper lip and all that... which is a load of rubbish,  lets strip away pretences & get to real human experiences, if we could talk about the bad stuff surely it would lift the taboos ?  yet who goes first ? My favorite songwriters, artists, writers are those who tell it from the heart who put themselves on the line. yet I feel I can't..
see I'm frustrated that I feel inhibited about sharing all my real stuff in blog rants. I am here after all in a roundabout way to keep in touch with friends, and lets face it to sell art, public face-private face conundrum. I let rants out here & people stop me down the street, "ooo you should delete that blog ! people are talking about it in the pub" ( yeah well the local pub deinzens can frak off ). The more I think about it the more that all the big stuff in my life has been shhhh, a secret, who am I protecting ? me , my family ? collegues?  I guess if i vented my spleen about the fire service mis managment, I'd get the sack, what about the other stuff?
I remember having to hide when I was a single pregnant teenager so the neighbours didnt see the bump, that sucked. Is it okay to talk about trauma when time has passed? it seems a long time ago now that my son was rushed off by police, in an ambulance, hauled through the courts, or taken into a mental hospital. People didnt know what was going on, or did they, I notice no-one asks about him, so maybe they did? Surely it would be better if we could talk about death, pain, mental health, cancer, abuse, drug abuse, alcoholism etc ? Sure some people sail through life relatively unscathed, but most sadly don't, its real. its what happens, and yet we have to make sense of it in dignified silence.
For famillies undergoing trauma, the everyday takes on painful significance, mediocre soap opera storylines can trigger heartwrenching memories, something beautiful like a bird in the garden or a cute child can be painfully poignant.
I guess I can't talk about specifics, I guess I need to pour it into art, a comic strip, a story, removed from source, but it feels dishonest to smile & make small talk, feels like I'm not being true to my core beliefs about being human & open. But I am here after all to sell art & project Vicky the artist, not provide gossips with salacious bullets. I have nothing to hide but....
lets talk about the weather, ooo look a picture of a fluffy kitten, aren't I great please buy my art for SALE atwww.balnacra.com. tra la la.

I havent blogged here in over a year ! I think I felt Blogspot was a bit lonely & isolated compared to the likes of myspace, but of course things have moved on since then & its all more interactive now.

In the meantime I've been ranting away on myspace. We've run a comic convention in Inverness. I've relaunched myself as a nearly full time free lance artist. I've rejigged my own proper website & started a flikr account. Its all rather confusing really .. and whats the point of being in so many seperate places?

Well I figure it all helps combat that artistic isolation of working from home, I need the interaction or I grind to a halt.

I'll probably do the same ranting here as I do on myspace, I know people read that, grud help them.. give me your feedback people, lets get interactive here & cook up some art !
meanwhile heres a picture of me and the boys at the FutureQuake stand at Birmingham.

metal casting workshop beinn eighe nature reserve sunday 20th may.

Bristol comic convention with the futureQuake stall ..

Aaand relax, feeling mighty stressed about the next two weeks maddness, & trying to organise what i need packed for where & when & what i've forgotten.. we went off camping for the night. no kids, late, just stopped up the glen near a river , may midgeys, magic. stuffed our faces campfire stylee.

then headed across to the east today for viking show thingy that some friends are involved in, much fun. partying with them tonight.

up in the hills , above applecross.