Tuesday 3 September 2013

Dabbling With Ink

Currently, I am working on two large landscape paintings. I am really enjoying painting them but I am not one of those people who can concentrate on something from start to finish. I get bored that way and I find that my work suffers. I have always been like this. Back in my interior design days, I could think of nothing more painful than having to work on a large interiors project for months sometime, late into each evening.

So, the way I manage my low boredom threshold is to work on other pieces inbetweeen. I find this a great way to create art. I know it may not be ffor everyone but I think it is important to each find what works best for us. I know that for some artists, breaking their concentration or chopping and changing puts them off track.

The landscapes I am working on are in acrylic and I have been working to develop the manner in which I apply acrylic paint over the past few months. I find that periods away from them though, means that I have "new eyes" when I return to them. This may only be a couple of hours doing something else: I am not talking days at a time here.

The above photo shows one of my meanderings during such a break from the landscapes. Recently, I was in a friends studio. They had been working with ink. It inspired me to have a play around with ink myself and I have to say, I absolutely love the characteristics of it. Vibrant colours way beyond watercolours  and the way it bleeds into the paper and the colours bleed into each other is really quite exciting.

Once I had completed this first little ink dabble, I decided to pop it into a frame jut to see how it looked. I am a bit of a frame-snob and I have traditionally gone for quite expensive, top quality hand-made frames. However, recently, I have deliberately been producing more affordable artwork for people and using off-the-shelf frames helps keep the prices down. putting some of my smaller experimental pieces and some of my sketches up for sale has ben very rewarding. Not everyone can afford a two-thousnd pound original and making originals available to peopleis, I think quite an important thing to do. The feedback I have had from people has been very positive and I don't see how selling a little ink paining affects the sale of a 3 x 3 foot oil on canvas, so it's something I intend to continue doing.