blah blah blah blog

I am very tired and may have to elaborate on this later, but I am sort of wary of a any art or discussion of art that makes my brain go "blah blah blah ginger."

I mean I know sometimes I go off on overly art speak tangents, but I think mostly when I do I am explaining a technique or tool or if discussing critique I am keeping it simple and communicative.

I am referring here to overly involved "I paid for these words with my tuition check and better use them"  discussions. Regurgitated coursework. That sort of thing.

When I worked as an operator for the phone company, we'd get a lot of Spanish speakers, and since when I was a drama filled teen (we all were, don't judge, you were too) my PLAN FOR LIFE was to be in Paris wandering around painting I took French all thru jr high, high school, and college. My Spanish is not functional. I cannot speak it at all. and I should have taken some Spanish at least a semester or two. But since I live where I do, I understand pretty much anything said to me in Spanish, I just don't command a vocabulary capable of responding with any accuracy.

When spanish speaking people would call in, I found that as long as I paid attention to what I was saying, visualized the point I was trying to get across, and meant what I said and said what I meant in English, then the Spanish speaker and I could understand each other with very little problem. Of course these were simple phone interactions having to do mostly with the operation of the phone itself.

But I found that the meaning what you say and visualizing to get your point across also works when explaining things to students and people who don't know what you are discussing as well. For instance if I were explaining how to prepare a canvas, I had better luck teaching it when I visualized it while I was speaking.

If you are talking about things and don't understand them yourself it makes it very hard for people to follow what you are saying, so if you are just spewing words you think will impress people, everyone can tell and it shuts their brains off, and you get a lot of "blah blah blah ginger" going on.

That's why I normally think it's a waste of time to "explain" art. Yes, it is a form of communication, BUT it should be self explanatory and the meaning changes for each viewer.YOUR explanation is not MY explanation, and that's fine, that's how it should be.

 People who NEED to explain it verbally to other people are imposing their view OR don't really want to admit they didn't actually look at it and let themselves be affected by it, so they are restating something someone else said about it without the power of understanding to fuel their words.

schools, influences, labels... they are all, at their base, meaningless. The real thing to understand is your internal thoughts about it. Art is simple, art is pure communication, visual depiction, music, dance they have no language barrier, all beings can be influenced by them see/hear/feel/do them.

It's the universal language, as simple as a smile and as complex as the history of the world.

Anything else is teaching a pig to whistle.

Things you put other things in

So, I have this dream purse. It holds everything I need to take with me, it has an adjustable strap, enough padding to protect pencils and small electronics, and it's black to go with everything, and sturdy, It also has only zippers, no velcro and none of those useless magnetic snaps. Some day, I will find this purse. I will buy it. I will buy two, a spare just in case. And when the first one dies, I will painstakingly take it apart, and turn it into a pattern so I can make them myself.
And I will NEVER buy another purse.
I am explaining that to you as a preface to warn you that I may have some sort of problem. Because what this is really about is Art supply caddies.

I have these pencil boxes They are these

I have two of them One I use with the dividers to hold pencils in one section, a selection of pitt pens in the middles section and a sandpaper block, drafting compass, 6" ruler, a vinyl eraser and metal sharpener. The two bands on the  lid I use to hold two small white envelopes One full of Vellum bristol ACEO stock, and the other to hold textured drawing ACEO stock.

The other one holds watercolor pencils, a 12 color cotman half pan set, a few brushes, a metal sharpener, an envelope full of watercolor ACEO stock and smallish roll of artists' tape.

Theory being, I can just grab one and I have everything I need for a day out of art.

Oh except, I also need to bring the 6" x 6" masonite panel I use to tape down ACEO's and that doesn't fit in there. And also I need to bring water/something to hold water. Oh and in addition I don't always know which one I will want when I get where I am going so I need to bring both with me. And they are heavy, they don't have handles or straps... so I need to bring a bag to carry them. and as long as I am bringing a bag I might as well throw in a watercolor block and a pad of drawing paper. And my big watercolor set. and a few more brushes.

Now the simple act of grabbing a kit that is self contained and easy to carry has turned into a giant heavy bag of stuff.

I had this Idea of making a cloth cover for a moleskine that had a pencil and pen loop on the spine and a pocket in front for an eraser and sharpener. And I still might make that, but honestly as I was designing the pattern I kept thinking of OTHER STUFF I should include a space for on it..

The company that makes these pencil boxes also makes a clipboard size and style box with a strap, and that would pretty much take care of the whole sheebang, but I can't imagine how annoying and heavy and weirdly shaped that would be to carry around...

Now a collapsible cup, a piece of unfinished masonite that was about 4 "x 6" and a set of cotman brushes with the short handles, are things that would probably help. as well as taking the pencils out of the watercolor box except for a few sketching greys, and then adding in a graphite pencil, eraser, and one of the superfine black pitt pens. would make a better "I don't know what I'll want " kit.
But I know I will desperately wish for something I left behind.

Also the french easel? WEIGHS A MFT (see below).  I have a strap pack for it, which is very nice, but I am short in the torso, so with it strapped to my back it goes from the top of my leg (otherwise known as the bottom of my ass) to my head, meaning when carting it anywhere if I sit down, I have to take it off, or get punched in the head with the mast of the easel. And can they make a french easel that isn't so fussy to set up? 

And seriously, their rich, long history of making them aside, when you are working with a julian out doors don't you always worry that the relatively spindly legs are gonna give out on rough terrain?

Basically a day out with the french easel means a week of shoulder pain, a possible concussion and a stressful session of work being vaguely worried that any second the whole thing is going to keel over.

And lest you think this problem of storage is only for leaving the house...

I am out of space for finished canvases. I need at least 20 more drawers in the studio for stuff. and a way to clear up about 5 more feet of floor space so I can set up the second easel in the studio. Also I can't find my 72 color tin of derwents'.

MFT=metric fuck-ton

Something I was thinking about the other day.

So I was working on my self portrait The other day  (you can see the progression here) But this isn't about that just what I was thinking about while I worked.

While I was working I was thinking about influences... it was kind of tangent my brain went off on (I need to keep the parts that aren't painting entertained somehow)

from the leaping off thought of:

you know a method and you can either boil it down to the basic "How To" technique, you know use tool x with paint b and stroke y,

or

you can allow other artists to influence you, and try to copy what they do with those tools.

I have always tried to get to the very basic use of tool through experimentation some times making up my own way to do it. When I need information about a process or tool I tend to look the tool/process up in a art hardware text book or on wikipedia or in a product tutorial made by the manufacturer of said product and then go from there. Once I have the kernel of basic starting point, I build from there.

BUT this is not to say I am not influenced by other artists. I find satisfaction in Hopper's work, and some of my stuff has been likened to O'Keefe (although I have to say , I don't see that one at ALL in my stuff, although I find it flattering) I also love Bougereau and Cassat, and I would like to think they helped me learn my craft in some way.

However that said , since the time in my teens when I had an art teacher scold me for not "Painting like them" and pick up a brush and paint over my work they way they would paint it, I have been brutal and possessive about making sure my stuff looked like MY STUFF, and not like anyone else's.

The problem comes (and the thought that occurred to me while working on the self portrait) is when people look at your stuff and then ask you for your influences.
Because basically what they are asking is

"What lens should I be looking at this through?"

and if you say

"Uh... Hopper." then they whip out their Hopper-Brain-Filter and go "Oh yah, now I see where you were going." but they are no longer looking at what you were trying to say, they are now looking at it through a filter of what Hopper was trying to say, effectively removing your voice from your art.

There wasn't really a point to this ramble, when I originally jotted it down in my redbubble journal, Just wanted to get down the thought of the brain filter/influence thing, while it was still fresh in my head. But now that I have thought about it for a while, I have thought of this.

Entertainment is so explicit now. Everything has to be self explanatory or no one knows what to do with it. The fact that you need to ask "How am I supposed to react/feel/understand/look at this?", means you've let other things influence a lot of what happens to you in a day.

Something like this

If you need outside advice on how to react, what lens to look at it through, why? Okay here's what I was thinking when I painted it, "Wow that's like the fourth fern I've killed, I am really bad at ferns. What a lovely over cast morning, the window behind it is frosted lovely with foggy glowing light. I like this green. It's kind of sad how bad I am at fern tending, cause they are so beautiful. I also kill a lot of small Ivy plants."

See? What I was thinking was basically this is sad, and beautiful and a little funny in a bittersweet way. So if you come to me and say, what should I think when I look at this, well, I don't know...I know what I was thinking, and it's not abstract at all, so however you feel or whatever it makes you think, then that's what it should make you think.

So I challenge you to go through an entire day doing the following exercise.

Any time you see something new spend about 5 minutes looking at it. Really study it. Listen to your inner voice and edit out anything that seems like outside influence like "Whathisname hated that thing." "Those really annoyed my mother" "My best friend would love this." "I saw that on that ad on TV." "They had one of those on that show.".

Just dump all that stuff out... that's not you; that's those people. If it satisfies you in some way, or disturbs you, try to identify why. Is it the color, the shape, the way it feels in your hand?

If you can train your brain to really "see" and learn to trust your own feelings and input, then you can ween yourself off the lens of influence.

If you like a piece of art because you really like it, because it satisfies you, makes you happy, adds the right touch of gloom  or brightness to your decor, great! Or did you buy something because you were told it was HOT and NOW and COLLECTIBLE by someone who was just after a sale?

If my stuff doesn't speak to you, that's fine. If it does, that's fine too! But don't let anyone tell you what you SHOULD like. Assert your OWN influence, look at things through the lens of your life and experiences, not other peoples'.