Threaded barely
You may have noticed a slight lack of updates recently… or, to put it in non-bloggy terms, a lack of comics. That’s because I’ve become a student again and as such I’ve been a bit busy.
I have been making some art though, which I was planning on showing you, but after looking at it I’ve decided there is no way I can reveal it to the word.
Is it because it’s a secret?
No.
Is it because by showing you I risk causing you mental, even physical anguish?
No.
Is it because it’s a bit rubbish?
Yes.
My tutor sat down and took a look at all of my work, the comics, the animations and some other things I’ve put together, and decided that I really like working in small scale two-dimensional black and white ink-based images.
‘Follow me’, he said, as he headed down to the store room. When we got there I was handed a pack of coloured pastels and two huge pieces of very nice textured paper.
An experiment in colour and scale.
The experiment, as I have mentioned, failed. I created a pair of horrible contorted mutants in colour… and like all mutants created under experimental conditions, they have now been locked up in a basement, facing a wall and never to see the light of day again.
However, as a reflective exercise on the nature of creating art it was rather useful. I now know that I hate pastels and that my technical ability with them is terrible. I also remembered why I love ink so much, the fluidity that leads the drawing. Plus, and this is the biggest shocker for me, I found that I quite liked working with colour. It’s pretty.
I want to ask you about your experiences with art materials… what does it for you and what doesn’t… and have you ever found yourself creating a monster?
Oh, and the comics… We’re back on track… I’m thinking of going up to three a week again with the Sunday strips being 3-celled… I have a few in reserve too.
I do admittedly little drawing, but when I do, I only like to use pencil. I’ve tried ink, pastels, oils, etc. But the only thing that makes me feel connected to what I’m doing is pencil. I also like pencil because I prefer black and white (obviously, since I’m a reader here). Color is pretty but black and white has character.
Pencil is one of my favourites, just because subtlety of tone and the fact you can erase it. I frequently pencil out my strips, albeit loosely just because I don’t have the time to make mistakes… but when I do I like thick black ink and, as you say, all the character it has.
so are you gonna make a colored comic? man, that would be strange.
I hate pastels as well, and included with those are water colors and oils, if i paint i prefer acrylic, even with their limitations.
I’m always tempted to go with colour… but I figured if I did it would be a different comic, not a Flowfield one at all… still, there’s little danger of me making one using pastels, that’s for sure.
Acrylic is a fun thing to play with. I like it with a rubberiser for making t-shirts. Have you got on work up you feel like showing us?
Tell you what, and this goes across the board… if enough people volunteer to show their work I’ll post a picture of one of my abominations.
do you want our embarrassingly bad stuff, or things we like? I guess i can give you both. i’ll look around tonight after work. I already know a great bad one.
.-= ambroziak´s last blog ..gnome and ski free yeti dance!!! =-.
I have to ask, what is ninuous?
It isn’t even in wikipedia!
–
Evan
I made it up.
It’s one less than tenuous…
Wow, I should have got that one!
It’s easily done…
I’m impressed, by the way, that you wiki’d it…
Excellent post Adam. Very funny. Reminds me of a Fastshow sketch about oranges (‘And could he?’. ‘Could he fu…’.
As to why Polaroid: before Polaroid I felt like this:
When it was proclaimed that the Library comprised all books, the first impression was one of extravagant joy. All men felt themselves lords of a secret, intact treasure. (Borges, 1993, p67).
The rest, as they say, is here:
http://pentimento.squarespace.com/journal/2008/7/14/why-polaroid.html
Chin up lovelyy! x
.-= Sean´s last blog ..Obama wins (or: pies $5; or: homemade sausage rolls $3.80; or: frittata $7). =-.
I love that sketch… and whilst I cant find it, there is one that’s appropriate:
I can’t imagine you working with anything other than Polaroids… similarly I can’t imagine Polaroids working with anything other than you.
Oh! Bloody, that reminds me, I have a Polaroid I was suppose to send to you (Sean), don’t I? I told Adam about this: I bought a used scanner a while back, and it had a picture in it: A Polaroid of a child that looked to be about thirteen and overweight, and a mobster’s son, sitting on a mall Santa’s lap, both of them with ridiculous facial expressions. I’ve not even got around to scanning it yet…
I created a monster the other day, but she was supposed to be a monster. She did come out looking all crappy though. I have a love/hate relationship with my oil pastels, on the one hand I like some of the colors and effects I’ve created and I like the straightforward application, on the other hand they leave little flakes all over the place, I can never figure out how I created the effects I liked again and they cramp up my hands and get all over my fingers. I caved last weekend and bought some acrylic paint, which I have yet to try out, but I’m sick of the pastels.
.-= The Great Joe Bivins´s last blog ..SONG: Robot, Bitch, 2009 =-.
Those are exactly the same reasons I fell out with them. And the flakes… the floor of my studio (yeah, I have a studio… how official is that?) looks like some sort of technicolour drug den with piles of coloured powder everywhere.
Sounds great, when is the house warming? The coloured powder isn’t just cocaine and food dye is it? That would be boring, and hard to explain the next day.
.-= Ben´s last blog ..Little Birdy =-.
Tried out the acrylics, which were troublesome but did what I wanted them to do. Ran out of yellow, though. Finished a painting except for a bunch of big bare patches that were supposed to be yellow.
.-= The Great Joe Bivins´s last blog ..Unpopular Blog: Across the 8th Dimension! =-.
I don’t really do art, I just shoot photos, and it is really hard to have an abomination with a photo. It is either ok, or just shit, never so terrible it makes you want to carve random symbols into the person standing next to you with a potatoe peeler.
.-= Ben´s last blog ..Little Birdy =-.
If i have to draw, pencils are my favourite aswell. They are simple, cheap, erasable and easy.
YAY THE COMICS ARE BACK!!!
Hm…mostly everything comes out wrong. The wrongest horrible monster always comes out through paint…paint despises me!
pencil is nice, though it looks very good when all that has been erased and inked. I’m like “wow, was it really like that?” Ink is more tidier than pencil for me, because I always go over board with sketching…
But I’m only 12, so I have a lot more art ahead in my life.
I’m really into watercolours, and ink. And the two together. I think my worst artistic endeavors have come from experiments in acrylic paints. I can’t get any depth with them… they lay on like oils, but they dry too fast. Something about the combination just frustrates me.
Pastels have always been sort of a trouble for me, too… I like the IDEA of pastels a lot, but I’ve never been able to make them do what I think they ought to be able to do. But I’m glad you’ve discovered you like colour: it’s a very pretty thing. And now I’m picturing Sunday’s three-panel strips in colour, like a syndicated comic. Hahaha!
OH! And if you want, to keep your load light, you could take guest comics! I’d be willing to draw one. Actually, I have an idea that’d be rather fitting… I’ll work it up and send it over.
.-= Roo´s last blog ..Getting into the swing of things =-.
Thank carbon you’re back.
I missed the old philosophy in B&W.
This conversation reminds of a theory on art I’m sure I’ve heard attributed to Andy Warhol: that eventually you will be able to create art simply by pointing a finger.
“This is art. I created it by naming it as such.”
Is blame, therefore, art?
Is blame therefore art?
Only if you name it as such, I’d think. I blame you for being art.
.-= Roo´s last blog ..Oooooh, shit! =-.
Ink, I love. Any sort of ink, really. Whether it be in biro form, fineliner pen or a pot of India ink (I always have one on my desk) I just love to work with it.
Pastels, I can just about get along with – but not oil pastels.
I dislike pencils. And I’m not a massive fan of charcoal, either. I’m not really sure -why- I dislike these mediums, but me and them just don’t really get along.
Anything which involves glue can pretty much go away into a hole and die, as far as I’m concerned. Cutting and sticking is my nemesis. Collage and I have never gotten along, and I very much doubt we ever will.
Paints I love! But I’m not too sure around watercolours. I think it’s because I’m not entirely sure how I’m supposed to be using them, and while for most things I don’t care about whether I’m using the “correct” technique, there’s something about watercolours that I tend to avoid.
Photography is something I will always love. It’s the one medium I can truly show what I want to in, achieve results I actually like.
Anything 3D I pretty much fail miserably at. I can’t make things. I’m far too clumsy, uncoordinated and heavy-handed for that sort of thing (although it’s fun and easy to blame it on being left-handed. It makes no sense logically, but people tend to believe it as an excuse).
Monsters aren’t all that terrible, are they? ^O^
I like to drawing with ink pens. Ball-point, felt-tip (Sharpies), and the like. I don’t draw often enough to be truly disappointed by anything I’ve produced, but sometimes I realize that the colors I’ve chosen looked a lot better in the beginning stages of the drawing.
.-= sitting pugs´s last blog ..Off Topic: Because I said sew =-.
I’m not a very good artist to begin with, so most of what I do is unpolished pencil/pen drawings in my notebook, rather than meeting notes, which I luckily don’t really need because I remember nearly all of it word for word. Did the same in high school and college.
I’m visibly a little better than the average perosn, but nothing compared to career artists. I do create monsters though, usually intentional, but sometimes the proportions of an arm or a leg is off enough to really bother me and I scribble it out. Oddly enough, the intentional monster I most commonly draw is actually a polished man in a business suit, so he doesn’t actually look like a monster, though is foolish and mentally immature enough to be manipulated into doing horrible things.
I’ve been trying to get good at drawing with colored pencils, and I’ve made some progress, but it is an altogether new dimension to add to the drawing. Now, not only do I have to get the shape right, but I have to get the color right too… it takes a lot out of me.
Strangely, I can do painting fairly well, on a good day. Not always, though. My art page at http://www.erikahammerschmidt.com/art.php is quite a mishmash of good and bad.
When you said pastels, at first I thought you were referring to pastel colors (pink, light blue, light green)… I guess I don’t like those, either, for the most part. As for the crayony things called pastels, it’s been so long since I used them, I can’t remember whether or not I liked them. Surely, though, the fact that I’ve gone so long without using them is proof that I hated them so much I repressed the memory…
.-= Erika Hammerschmidt´s last blog ..Abby and Norma #564 =-.