working too hard to work

Lost a weeks art time on the South West Ross 'Arts & Eats' Leaflet I'm working in ( words provided by a colleague whos good at this sort of thing ! ) Also missed The Highland Open Studios booklet launch in town, which involved some public- & sounds like fun.  Its Ironic that all this promotional work has left me no time & energy to organise my own venue or work for the Open Studios event 1st - 9th May. So I'll be running the exhibition from home to enable me to crack on with work. 15 days to create an exhibitions worth of paintings ?

Have also lost days & a billion calories with firefighting in dry weather up the hills, pix here.

Have also got my name in initial nominations round for best colourist on Eagle awards ( Baftas for comics ) . Which is embarrassing as I've only had a couple of pages published in last year. I hope next year to deserve such a thing as theres loads of projects poised...

How many artists to change a light bulb?

managed to get an afternoon this week to paint & clear the studio. This chap above is me, practicing painting in black & white, and thinking ahead to a great comic strip I have to do for 'Something Wicked', think african tribal zombies. Living up here where not only is there not much diversity of skin colour ( a whiter shade of grey ), but in fact everyone is a MacKenzie or at least a cousin of one, well basically I am unfamiliar with painting black skin tones, much to my shame.

Trying to work on all fronts simultaneously, both work to develop drawing skills, illustrations, tasks in hand, touristy paintings and paintings for my own satisfaction. Much of the frustration & lack of progress seems to be a simple matter of not getting time to simply Do art, despite it being my main occupation. However everything is on hold as my youngest child is leaving home in two days. The empty nest will mean that I will howl at the moon a lot, but after 25 years of mothering- means I don't have to put everyone & everything in front of my own work anymore. It means peace, space, silence to paint my socks off. ( silence apart from the howling of a middle aged woman who's primary role has gone ).

But who needs children when there are committees and groups who likewise only remember you when they want something. I'm currently working on a wee leaflet / brochure for an Arts Trail around the area. Which is all dandy, but when I don't actually have a studio or public premises or time to paint, I wonder why ....why? Do I need them or do they need me?
heres a wee map which might be part of the final design.

I like maps.

drawing practice

so I thought I better see if I could draw in black & white paint, I also tried painting outdoors, and in the living room. advantages and disadvantages with all of the above. sheesh. enough ! I'm having some of the evening off.

a thousand directions.

So what next ? Months of work to Hi Ex and where do I go from here?
Well in many ways the list of things I am already committed to is so long its a silly question, I have months work ahead of me. Most of it probably un-paid, who said being an artist was a good idea?

• I have a couple of chapters to colour for a really exciting and horrific story writen by Cy Dethan & drawn By Stephen Downey.
• I have a couple of sample pages to draw up for another graphic Novel horror pitch, it was lovely to meet the writer at Hi Ex.
• I have a strip to draw for Something wicked comic by end of summer, another writer I met for the 1st time this weekend.
• A double page illustration to do for Horror Anthology 'Murky Depths'
• a logo to design for local thing
• a giant exterior mosaic themed installation to plan and workshop within the community ( pending funding applications )
• My own book to finish writing & draw up some character designs and sample pages for.
• another Viking god illustration to finish
• A wild west wendy strip to draw.
• two Art exhibitions to paint for. the first one in May for Open Studios week
• A press launch and public art demonstration in town to plan, organise and do.

and this is just Aprils list !?

meanwhile he's one I did earlier, this is a gorgeous double page splash drawn by Kevin Levell, in Dogbreath fanzine, a story written By Richmond, digitally coloured by me. 

lists are all very well- but where am I going with all of this? I believe one needs a clear goal and then the path becomes clearer. I feel like I am all things to everyone, working far too hard and earning far too little, compromised on all counts. what are my strong points? what do I actually want to do? I liked the catharsis of painting my Firefighting job, but it just doesn't sell enough. locally folks like very representational paintings of highland cows and the local castle, but they still don't buy enough to make it worth specializing in. The good galleries want fairly abstracted landscapes...you see where this is going? this could go on for a paragraphs...I know what I don't want and that is another year dragging boxes of mediocre crafty bits and art prints around all the local craft fairs listening to " ooo I don't like this modern stuff, I like the sheep though " , " I wish I could draw, £2 oh its a bit expensive " etc

so being a pencil for hire is still better than being a wage slave at a desk, especially when there aren't any desk jobs available anyway.  Its very easy to get lost in the art jungle working away alone and isolated in the mountains, so At Hi Ex weekend I talked to various editors and artists about this and showed them my badly photocopied wee folio of my overly diverse work.

Most people I showed the work to liked a drawing that had been a random doodle for my own fun, so does my best work happen when I'm not trying to do things that other people want ?

It was pointed out to me that just because I am a fan of comics I don't need to draw them, which is true, as I know my layouts and anatomy is weak especially compared to some of the masters we watched at work this weekend. However since I find myself fully immersed in the comics world, its comic doors that open more readily than other ones. The trick to drawing skills is simply practice, which again I feel is a problem when the only art classes for miles are indeed run by me, the only life models are my immediate family, and its a struggle to find time to eat and sleep never mind simply doodle. am I making excuses?

Or talking myself up into getting away from the reams of Hi Ex spread sheets, clearing a space in that cluttered dingy studio, ignoring the task list, ignoring highland cows, ignoring all the million and one mental blocks, and simply throwing some paint about ?

( if you missed the BBC page last week this was the illustration above )

It was also said that I should approach comics the way I paint, which sounds good, but paintings start from a photo or scene in front of me ( or mostly both ), comics start with a script, and horribly laboured stick figures..how to marry the two ? 

enough questions ! The keyboard is a good chapter break, but the answers lie in paintbrush and paper...

Thanks for listening. And A HUGE thankyou to those who took time to look and talk at the weekend. 

Hi-Ex takes over life

I'm afraid my web site, this 'Vickys Art' blog and my 'picture of the day' blog have been sadly neglected recently. Why? Hi Ex. You should also see the state of the my art room, the house & garden.
I have to wind up Hi Ex 2010, get my skates on quickly and paint like the wind now, as the  South West Ross Highland Open Studios week is on during the first week of May and I'll be pulling an exhibition of paintings together.

meanwhile, what is Hi-Ex? Why ? How did it go & What effect might it have on my own art ?

Hi Ex is - The Highland International Comics Expo, this weekend was the 3rd annual weekend event at Eden Court in Inverness. all the info here  . Rich & I are huge comic fans, we were travelling the length of the country to go to comic events & when Judith the out-reach worker at the venue asked if we could get some comics creators up to Inverness, it just snowballed into a full blown convention from that. There are no other comic conventions North of Leeds let alone in Scotland which seemed mad give the wealth of HUGE comic names that have come from Scotland and the connection with Dundee and DC Thomson.

So we run this thing, we aim to have a family feel and get new folks into comics, we also want to scotch the myths that comics are silly & just for kids, its as valid an art form as any. Then theres raising money for a worthy Charity, in this case Children 1st, bringing some life to Inverness, and getting new people creating and participating ...all good stuff.

We do really well at getting charity donations of people, hundreds of goodies to giveaway to ticket buyers, getting support from within the industry, fantastic goodwill from creators and incredible press coverage. What is a struggle for us is the amount of work it involves, effectively voluntary work. The size of our team is limited by our geographical remoteness, we are 65 miles away from the venue and 100's away from anyone we could delegate to.We get incredible help off Mike who does our website in Eire, and Dave in Birmingham who helps with design & publishing. My Daughter Ish, helped this year by Lukáš were fantastic at the weekend running around like superheroes. An other problem has always been funding, the established organisations just didn't want to know, until after a couple of years of banging on doors we got some assistance from the Highland Regional Council which made a tremendous difference. We might not make a loss this year for the first time ! We have definately raised over £2000 with the Charity Auction, Raffle and Artists donations.
 Our distance from town also means that we are effectively outside all of the normal business networks so its very difficult to meet Town businesses that we can work with..again lots of banging on doors.


Rich has a day job, so spends all his evenings trying to divide his own writing projects with working on Hi Ex. I am freelance ( although on fire call around 158 hours a week ) so can work away at Hi Ex in my own time, sadly at great detriment to my own art work ( Thats another post !).

This all sounds rather negative, why do we do it then?
Because we love to see our favorite creators. Because we love to see all those children running around having the time of their lifes. Because we love to plant some creative seeds, which even after 3 years are starting to grow healthily in some Highland young people. Because we love to watch people making new friends, and new creative projects. Because we love to support a worthwhile cause, Because the comics industry faces new challenges & we want to promote & support it in our own we corner, Because...we can.

While we do enjoy the weekend, It can be incredibly stressful for us two who go a week or so with little sleep and have to do everything from lugging boxes, postering, to guest liaison & customer care. This year was less stressful than the previous two because there was no snow blocking the roads( although it followed us the Monday we finished! ), also there was such a great buzz from so many wonderful people it was impossible to not have a great time.
There are some fantastic reviews from people who attended, they can give you a better overview than me;

www.hi-arts.co.uk

forbiddenplanet.co.uk/blog

kev f Sutherland comic art.blogspot.com

Sarah MacIntyre

http://oscillatingbrow.blogspot.com/2010/03/high-times-in-highlands.htmlhttp://alexiconman.blogspot.com/2010/03/con-report-hi-ex-2010.html 

daveshelton.blogspot.com

blogs.birminghammail.net

 www.sfx.co.uk

lucifal.wordpress.com

talesofthehollowearth.blogspot.com

So what does this all mean for my art ? am I an events organiser or artist? how do I pick up my art reins after months of this? Well being in a room with all these talented people is one heck of a creative stimulus, once I've done some more number crunching and Hi-Ex e-mails I shall  post some thoughts about my own work what I picked up from the weekend. Read those reviews in the meantime & I'll be back!

loch crows

yesterdays wee painting of some crows I'd photographed by the loch a couple of days previously. I'd like to do more, i love the shapes the throw as they fly. Acrylics 23 x 15cm on thick paper

Snow Chaffinch

a wee painting done at Art Class today. based on photos I took back in the snow.  Want to do Crows or ravens in flight but they are tricky to catch!

Teen Wulf.

It may appear that I don't do any art ever, but I am mostly these days to be found glued to the desk working away at comic projects. This is a taster for a fantastic comic strip which I digitally coloured the centre pages for. The art is by brilliant Kev Levell, story written by Richmond & strip will appear in Dogbreath #22 being launched at Hi-Ex 2010.

For anyone who doesn't understand what digital art entails or thinks its cheating, ask me about it at 4am some night when I am frozen to the hard chair & hand has seized onto the wacom pen.  I'll show more as soon as I can.

Bealach Commission

Heres a Painting commission that was a priority job this week, around 19" by 11", the Applecross pass, Bealach Na Ba- I've enjoyed doing it, must finish the big canvas view from a mile further up the hill I've started. Otherwise mostly I've been busy with illustrations, comic colouring, comic pitches & Hi-Ex organising ( buy your discount tickets on line roll up roll up ). Frustrated that I never get enough time to paint, got an open studios week in May so once Hi-Ex is out of the way, It will be a flat out race to get on with comic projects and push some painted work through. I've also got my own comic ideas that have been getting put on the back burner for years...soon I'll let these onto the top of the list !

comics workshop at primary school

How to Draw comics workshop at Lochcarron Primary School. The upper school class are doing a project on the Highland clearances so there were lots of great comic strips on homes burning and boats sailing off to foreign lands, with the odd sheep chase and murdered Factor ( thats the bad guys who kicked people out of their homes ). The younger group this afternoon have been studying the Polar regions, so we had loads of great strips about polar bears and penguins, generally less violent & all about friendships.I thoroughly enjoy working with youngsters, there are just a couple of tricks which seem to produce a breakthrough in their confidence, moving from stick figures to 3d figures and from " I can't " to " can I ..? ".  These workshops have been bought to you via Hi-Ex.

meanwhile I am working on a painting commission...stand by for the finished version hopefully later today.

Papermaking

after last weeks rag weaving workshop today was a paper-making one at Strathcarron. this morning was the usual Tuesday art class- anyone is welcome to join us any time, very relaxed & informal group at Lochcarron Church hall. teaching how to draw comics at the local school tomorrow & working on a painting of the Bealach for a commission. More regular art updates should follow after Hi Ex which has taken over our lives at the moment.

Lochcarron Winter Sunrise

This is a commission for a Ruby Wedding Anniversary. Just got it back from My lovely Framers over at Kishorn this morning & away in the post, not before a quick photie in front of the view..mountains in back obscured by Snow. Acrylics on thick paper. Stained Ash frame. Fashion design by winter-scruff.com , hey at  least I'd brushed my hair!

Steam Punk

Heres the sketch for something I'm working on at the moment. I realised I had a problem with steam punk, & that is I can think Victoriana without thinking pollution, poverty, social injustice, the excesses of imperialism, yes even in my fantastical imaginings have a social agenda, At what cost would gleaming crystal palaces, zepplins, robots & steam machines come at ?.. so Here's the waifs, but we couldn't leave them there in the stinking workhouse, thank goodness for the philanthropists!

Birthday Girl

Heres a wee painting I've done of Ish for her Birthday today. 17. First time I've used water colours in ages!

Bruno goes to art class.

Took big fat hairy Bruno-dog to art class yesterday to model for us. Much entertainment & dog biscuit bribes. The student/participants came up with some great fluid sketches of the fidgeting beast despite initial panic. heres some of mine, I mostly had the back of his head as I sat next to him to try & keep him calm. He is a most photogenic pooch & I love him.

Hi Ex stand in 2

Heres the second stand-in painted, ouch we've all got sore backs now!  This is 'Good Dog, Bad Dog' By Dave Shelton.  Just some varnish & then the stands to make.

Stand ins

I thought it would be a good idea to have some stuff to decorate Eden Court with at Hi Ex, So I put out a plea to some of our artist Guests for characters. Heres The first one we've painted up. A Character called Lady Tsuji from a Story written by our very own Richmond Clements and illustrated by the lovely Inko.

Next Its the Good Dog, Bad Dog ( as seen in the Guardian ) by the talented Dave Shelton...watch this space for the finished items!

'After the Snow'

Well I loved the snow... but at times we only seemed days away from the whole country grinding to a halt. But people in Scandinavia, Mongolia, Siberia, Canada etc deal with minus freezing temperatures all the time. So when the climate changes happens, when the gulf stream switches off, I figures a few years, decades or centuries on, you'd need a mixture tribal and salvaged tech to survive. It will be quite cosy underground in those buried sky scrapers. I've got my head torch and snow boots so I'm getting prepared. I guess I should have put a top of a tall building poking out of the snow, but I thought it too 'planet of the apes' obvious. sketches based on Mongolian archer women, scanned & painted in Photoshop. Did you know, a Mongolian composite bow, make of layers of wood bone & sinew, from Genghis Khans time, was more powerful in aim & range than bows of modern materials.

ink version of Biker Jane

not happy with drawing, hardly any time for art- stressing me out. Need those jobs, yet pitching for them leaves me struggling to be something I'm not & not giving myself time to be/ do what I am good at- whatever that is. When I ran my pottery I never felt like a 'proper' potter, but of course I was, now it frustrates me that all those pottery skills lie dormant and unused. I feel everything is clumsy and amateur, even my garish crochet projects.  What I did realise tho' that I surround myself with illustrators and comic artists, who all draw from imagination?  I feel so inadequate at this, but then remembered that from an early age was taught that drawing from imagination was bad, drawing from observation was the only valid method. Blimey it even took me years to get past the idea that photo reference was woeful cheating. so many rules, of course to let go of them all would result in completely self indulgent splodge of cat fur and plaster- its art darling. If I don't get some time to do any soon I shall implode- which would in itself, be art of course.

Biker Jane

Work in progress- and it has been for many years. We all have a graphic Novel inside of us, or think we do, My problem is I can't write and my drawn layouts/ anatomy/ action need a lot of work, so I've been sitting on this project until I get good enough to give it a go. This is Jane the Biker, my idea of a comic female character - I hesitate to use the word heroine . You do not want to meet Jane on a dark night. Its sort of a dark road movie set in the highlands. Strangely the world is changing so fast, aspects of the story are already looking olde worldy, smoking in public, no CCTV, people not using mobile phones as standard, different drugs being used... I'll have to hurry up & do it before we're all using hover jets. ( or set it deliberately in the past ). Figured I'd work up some versions of this sketch for colouring folio practice in different styles. Heres the start of the 1st one.

Art Class - life drawing.

Art Class- had some models today, low turn out due to snow, but good fun. Ish sat for 30/40 minutes, I made her look ancient & proportions are out.

Lukáš sat for 25 minutes, tricky light- excuses excuses. Really should practice drawing people more often.

Snow Crows.

you follow my 'pic of the day' photo blog, you may recognise these Crows which were sheltering from the blowy snow in the trees in our garden last week. mixed media on paper.29cm x 21cm

Moon Bow

31cm x 38cm, mixed media on card. Been messing about with this since last week, just trying to get last weeks night sky from memory, was it blue? green, gold, silver, pink, copper? enjoying the silky feel of paint slippy on this card.

Midwinter trees in moonlight.

A quick acrylic on card. 25cm x20 cm. ( and yes these things are always for sale )

Midwinter Birch painting

The snowy light is fascinating me,. daylight is so brief, but this last week has had a bright moon at night which helps combat the darkness, and in the snow makes everything amazing eerie colours, shapes distort, shadows shift. I like just going out in the freezing temperatures & looking at the sky trying to breathe in any light available. I hate Midwinter.

I've also been getting sick of 'painting by numbers' representational landscapes, which people like, and buy. But am currently allowing myself just to go mad with the paint, paint from memory and just splodge around to see what happens. Its pretty mentally exhausting but feels good. I also haven't had space/ house to myself in a couple of months, so am having to shift my working methods to try & work around this. Luckily the snow colours are inspiring enough to help combat the midwinter blues.

Stags & Snow

After a very long, very slippy, very snowy, very beautiful drive to Inverness today, I painted 8 of these staggy pictures.

Hi Ex, e-card

Our e-card for Hi Ex. www.hi-ex.co.uk

December

I haven't been blogging much, but thats not to say I haven't been busy!  There has been a couple of craft fairs, This is Lochcarron Hall at the producers day, where I sell my prints and crafty bits - Or  'little drawings ' as someone described my work this week.

I''ve done a recycled crafts demonstration, hopefully there will be some funding for some recycled craft workshops in the new year.  The community art class I run continues to be well attended.
Here is a picture of young people painting the pool table cover at a Youth Cafe workshop I ran on the east coat recently- The theme was about leaving home & homelessness in young people. Great fun & hopefully some important messages sank in.

Apart from that I've been pitching for some comic colouring work, can't show you samples yet I'm afraid!
I've also been press ganged into joining the Highlands Open Studios Committee, to help specifically with PR & marketing, should be fun!  In my case it should of course be called Highlands Open Spare room of chaos.

Lochcarron Commission

Heres a Christmas commission painting of Lochcarron including village hall.

quick sunset

Heres a quicky, commissioned by some kids at the door... I am a big softie & shall charge them some crisps or something.

mail me art submission

Finally finished this doodle, had meant to submit one a month to this but lost 3 months somewhere. I feel the need to delve back into squiggly lines and weird beasties, getting bogged down with 'representational' work .

The logic goes like this, I want art to be inclusive not elitist, that is so that anyone can appreciate it. So I'm trying to court the average person on the street as well as the arts establishment - to feed both my ideals and the chip on shoulder that art college left. So I make paintings that look like real things that people recognise "ooo its just like a photograph", but these aren't abstract or expressive enough for galleries, which also always used to sneer at my  squiggly stuff. However they do establish a degree of technical skill, which seems to annoy other local artists. But the average person ? is that the fake tan wanna be Katie Prices'? the x-factor watching masses? or the tweedy old ladies that pick up my art at craft fairs and say " ooo I don't like this modern art, but I like your landscapes "- modern art? why o why o why do I care what any of them think? why? well because art is a dialogue, communication, pointless in a vacuum. I just wish I could slough off this trying to be everything to all. stuff them, I want to squiggle- just forgotten how.