Dragon

Sometimes it just works. Unexpectedly, the usual amount of vague ideas, lack of "proper planning" and even a little resisitance still all come together.
We have a large box of art stuff, largely different types of coloured pencils, plus pastels, crayons, more pencils and lots and lots of half-used pads of different sizes and weights of paper. Every time I try to clear it out we get stuck with all the still untried possibilities. (But why are they still untried?) So my art curriculum this term has boiled down to opening the art box and using the stuff in there.
So that is what my daughter and I did yesterday. She really just wanted to carry on drawing her pictures to send to a friend (surely, my doubtful voice says, that is just as much art as my idea?) but agreed to give it half-an-hour. We settled on dragons as we have some delightful dragon stencils and I gave her the challenge of doing four pictures, each with a different material and different paper, and I joined her.

It was fun. She developed a character for one of her creations and was inspired to write a poem. She thought it would be "cool" to have a poem in which each line started with the letters that spell out "DRAGON" and my son let her know that this was an acrostic. We played with words and she wrote her poem and then copied it out onto her picture, which now, along with seven other dragons, decorates our mantlepiece.

Dragon

Deep in the wood,

Residing in a black cave,

All his skin green;

Guzzling a young deer,

Orchids scattered everywhere,

Never more to return to the land of men.

 Middle son had, meanwhile, been baking, so we switched chapter book for Poetry Tea. devoured awesome, warm cherry cake and shared poems. Eldest son read us a poem he has written for his English course and a story which he has just heard has made it through to the second round of a national competition. We were reminded of the Geographical Fugue and listened to it on youtube.

Sometimes it just works.

12x12

I love new year resolutions. The turn of the year presents the opportunity for me to reflect on how I want to be different and to make attempts to become what I want to be. There is a danger of the resolution becoming the law, exerting a pressure to be fulfilled that becomes an end in itself and no longer produces the helpful encouragement to change I would like; They need to be viewed as prompts to remember how I want to live. I am a sucker for patterns and themes and so have chosen 12 this year, either to be done once or twelve times a month:

1) to host local neighbours to eat at the house once per month (dinner, lunch, poetry tea, just a cuppa and a slice of cake ...)
2) to run 12 times per month
3) to bake 12 items per month
4) to choose not to use the tumble drier 12 times per month
5) to take my son out for a coffee and a chat about his latest writing project once per month
6) to practice navigation skills once per month
7) to take the children on a day-out once per month
8) to complete one painting project per month
9) to sort out one area of my personal admin once per month
10) to finish one book per month
11) to do one thing towards developing my workas a Breastfeeding Counsellor once per month
12) to blog 12 times per month

Together they are a mixture that encourages me to live the way I want to live: none feel over-ambitious and yet there is a challenge there to stop dreaming about how I want to be and to be that way, consistently, month in, month out for a year and see where that takes me.

Northern Italy

We had planned to go to Milan next, but after a day in Florence, felt that we had had the city experience. We headed north, guided only by our guide to the Italian Aires, and found a beautiful car park. The continent embraces camper vans and dotted around the countryside are Aires, not just picnic spots or service stations, but places where mobile homes are welcome to stay overnight, and most have facilities to fill up with clean water and get rid of the used water from the sink and to empty what is politely known as the "black water". We were parked by a fresh water tap, in front of a children's playground and across the road from this abbey.

In the morning we set out to the village in search of bread. We asked a villager who impressed on us the need to go to Angelo's, but our lack of Italian and his lack of English meant that we had no idea how to achieve this. We found a high-class delicatessan selling mostly dried meat whose proprietor also did not speak much English but had some visiting clients who did. From her we learned a little of the local area and the produce of the abbey and, more importantly, obtained directions to Angelo's.
Before leaving we explored the Abbey. The cloisters were a concert hall of bird-song and there was a small exhibition about the work of the monks. We had not entered Il Duomo on Sunday as there was a huge queue; we were the only visitors to this church and were touched by the emptiness and sense rare and private experience.
Angelo's took a little bit of finding (not surprising that my limited Italian had not stretched to understanding the directions) but was more than worth it. A little bakery tucked around the back of a farmhouse we left with fresh, hand-made foccacia and it felt a true Italian experience.
The Autostrada conducted us north to Lake Maggiore, where we chose to stay in a campsite in Bareno and were rewarded by a lakeside pitch no more than five metres from the lapping waves. Undetered by the grey skies and chill temperature, the rest of the party opted to paddle and even to brave swimming, if only long enough to win a 10 second bet! I chose to sit quietly by and paint.

Playing

I am not very good at playing. It is not something that comes naturally to me. I have been working on pictures of rocks and of dry-stone walls all term in my art class but am missing something in my slavish copying. My tutor sat me down for a demonstration of different techniques yesterday: wax resist, oil pastels, ink, wet-in-wet, drawing with the paint brush. She encouraged me just to play around. It makes me nervous. I can look at the paper and grasp that is is a single sheet, worth perhaps 20p. It doesn't take much paint. It is one afternoon, time for myself, away from the children, and I don't need to achieve anything. But I still feel that I can't do it. I still feel that I'm going to mess up. With the courage it would take to jump off a diving board, I persuaded myself to try everything she had shown me, to work my way across and down the page, a few rocks at a time, deliberately playing with each method. Some worked, some didn't. Some were fun, some weren't. By the time I reached the bottom left of the sheet, I was pleased with what I had done. I worked back in to a lot of it, covering over what didn't look so good and using the styles that were expressing what I wanted. Taking away the pressure of producing something, seeing it as an exercise in playing, in experimentation, freed me to paint and to let go.

I went swimming today. Another activity that makes me nervous, makes me tense. I know I'm supposed to have fun, but don't quite feel it. Taking the children to the leisure pool, I was enthusiastically taken to the slide as my way in to the water. We played in the wave machine, tried out both slides, once even with my little girl on my lap. I found myself laughing, chasing, splashing and, yes, playing. Maybe it's not all about growing up, maybe it's about letting go!

Creativity

Instead of Watercolours, I am going to a Painting and Drawing Class this term. I have the same tutor as last year and she encouraged me to think over the summer of a theme I would like to work on: I chose rocks. There are a lot of rocks in the Yorkshire Dales where I spent my two week summer holiday: natural rock formations, stepping stones, dry stone walls, derelict barns. I took a lot of photos. Now I am faced with developing them into art. There is a programme of study, set pieces each week with a technique to focus on and I spent some time last session discussing with my art teacher whether I would be better off concentrating on following the plan and learning new skills or following my own ideas. She was dismissive of the scheme of work: I could bang out a few skies (this week's subject) if I wanted, she said, but could instead push my creativity far more with my own ideas.
I was surprised at my own internal sense of safety in learning technique, being told what to do, having a skill to learn, to, hopefully, improve on. Do I have any creativity to push? Can I really build up a body of work, push the materials to get the effects I want, create something personal with my subject? In short, is there really anything there inside me - do I have anything to say?

I am learning a certain sensation, a tickling feeling in my wrists, when I am challenged, when I am scared, when I am on the edge and about to jump. I have made big changes to my life in recent months, and playing around in new ways with paints does not compare, but it is the same feeling: a little voice daring me to step out, to push myself, to find something new, to be me.

Autumn Colour

Start of term. Start of art classes. Two and a half hours to play with colour. There's a lot going on for me. This is just what I needed!

Reflections

It's hard to see what other people see. I admire a fellow student's painting and he will tell me what is wrong with it. He compliments mine and all I can see are the mistakes. Someone suggested propping the piece up when I get home and looking at it afresh in the morning. Another idea is to take a photo or look at it in a mirror.Another way of looking at things, a little distance, an alternative perspective - separated by time or space.
Reflections on art; reflections on life. It's the distance that helps me think. A cooling of emotions - despair, anger or fear. The opportunity to look at the details, to see the colours, the light and the dark. To see more clearly what is good, what doesn't work, what could be changed.

Tate Watercolours

I have been lucky enough to have another 'day off' and have spent it at the Tate Gallery in London at the watercolour exhibition. I felt like a child on a school day out, almost hopping up and down with excitement, and I was not disappointed. I had thought carefully about whether to join up with someone, my husband, a friend, a fellow evening-class student perhaps, but decided that I actually would enjoy it more by myself. There were a few occasions when I was tempted to comment to a total stranger about one of the pictures but most of the time I was happy to think my own thoughts, to not have to listen to anyone else's and to go at my own pace, lingering or moving on as I wanted. Picture after picture astounded me with colour, dexterity, detail, boldness and more colour. There were maps, portraits, architecture, botany, landscape, abstracts and war paintings. I tuned in to my own mental chatter, trying to capture what it was that made me internally exclaim, "amazing!" I asked myself over and again what I liked about the pictures that made me stop and examine them. Would I like to paint like that? It is hard to get passed the feeling that I will never have the skill to be able to paint like any of these artists and to let myself discover what I was drawn to. I also struggle not to apologies for my tastes, as if what I like must lack sophistication or substance. I find that I like bright colours, especially red and green; I like pen and wash, pictures with outlines, a somewhat 'illustrative' style; I am awed by courage: large scale, intimate detail or strong brush marks, reminding me the idea I once read in a climbing book of a 'committing move'. I have thoroughly enjoyed my day out and learned a great deal more about the range of the medium I am learning to paint in. Unexpected though, was how I have learned a little bit more about myself, who I am and what I love.

Voices in my head

I have begun to realise how much I listen to the voice in my head which tells me that I am wrong. Often, like the best of tv impressionists, this voice is a perfect copy of someone else and I am beginning to discover how often I really believe that what I am hearing is what that person is thinking. Sometimes it's the voice of a complete stranger: maybe someone reading a job application, the assistant in a shop or even a figure from history. There is another voice. This one tends to speak quickly, quietly and then retreat like a shy bird. This voice is the one that says, "I'm so tired, I need to sit down," or "No, I don't want to do what you're asking of me," or "I love that piece of art." The first voice shouts it down with accusations of laziness, selfishness or poor taste. I am beginning to learn to silence the first, at least momentarily, to take some control over and responsibility for my thoughts, to add some reason to the mix. I am beginning to learn to listen to the second, to take it seriously, just as I would one of my children. I am beginning to do what it says, when I can, and at least to hear it when I can't. Yesterday evening, in art class, we looked at abstraction. We listened to excerpts of music and sketched the inspired images in our heads, working the one we felt most drawn to into a painting. There was that voice telling me that I was doing it wrong, that my pictures were rubbish, that I was no good. And there was the second speaking of colours and shapes unique to me, rustling grasses, swooping rose stems and ambiguous lizard-shaped oases. I listened; I painted; and every time I do that, the first voice loses some of its power and the second gains a little more confidence.

Wasted

We have just completed a second two-week project at my art class, this time on movement. Inspired by the previous week's subject of Degas, I chose dancers and these two images:

I began by sketching them both in pencil and then roughly painting copies. Last week was cancelled so I used the time to try a couple more rough versions, but was increasingly unhappy and even bored by the picture. At class last night, I steeled myself to paint one, final version, incorporating all that I had learned:

My tutor worked her way round gradually and by the time she got to me I was almost done. She was not impressed. I can tell it's not good when she says that my rough sketches were more successful! She then took a paintbrush and suggested I try something more like 'this', and in two minutes created a fluid and dynamic figure on the page. Disheartened, I added strong lines and sweeping brush strokes to my rigid and inexpert copy and, encouraged by her comments of "That's more like it," felt a little better about my efforts.With less than half-an-hour left, I decided to have one more go, drawing with my brush and 'painting from the shoulder' :

It took me about five minutes. It felt as if all the hours, probably four in total, of struggling with these images had been wasted approaching them from completely the wrong angle. I had managed to paint something really quite good in just five minutes. No, my teacher corrected me, it had taken all four hours plus five minutes because I had to get to the point where I had learned what I needed to know to paint like this. I wonder what else in life feels like a waste but is actually getting me to the place I need to be to create the thing I need to create?

Death is the only deadline

In what I hope is becoming a habit, I went to the Fountain Gallery yesterday to see the new exhibition. It was a stunning collection of pen and colour works of flowers and bridges, the colour being a mixture of crayon and watercolour and collage and gold-leaf. The flowers were eye-catching but it was the bridges which drew me. Still holding on to the idea of searching for what it is I like, what my style might be, a little insight into myself, I spent a long time studying them closely. If I had money to spare, this is the one I would have bought:

I love the curves, the shapes and negative spaces, the weightiness of the pillar and the lightness of the suspension and the swooping birds and I love the colour. The artist has completed a whole series of bridge paintings, each taking a couple of days, some painted in situ and some in the studio if she had been 'chased away by the weather'. I spent some time speaking with her, reluctantly agreeing that I, too, was a student of art. She told me of her sketch books from her college days, in the Sixties, and how she looked back at how complicated she had made each picture, how she had tried to capture everything about a scene or object. She said that she had learned to pick and choose what she included.
Fifty years of art! Perhaps, when I am ninety, I will have a style as skilled and unique. You go on, she said, until you find your voice, and then you use your voice to say what you want, or to sing: death is the only deadline.
I left inspired. I have so much more time than I imagine to discover and grow my artistic self: although I did not see myself as creative in my teens and twenties, it is not too late for me now to find my unique style, my voice. And this is true in a wider sense: approaching 40 is making me reflective and it is tempting to envy those who seem to still be in a place of so much choice but I am increasingly seeing the time available to me and the choices open to me. I do not have to include everything, I can pick and choose. I am beginning to whisper in a new voice and to grasp that, indeed, death is my only deadline.

High Adrenaline Art

Tuesday's watercolour class saw us doing quick sketches of each other. While one class member sat on a chair on a plinth, the rest of us were given a strict time limit, varying from six to ten minutes, to draw and paint the model. It was the kind of exercise where I just had to jump in, there was no time to think or obsess about exactly where to put the first mark. With our teacher urging us on, it felt like we had only moments to draw before being told we should be painting by now. It called for confident and daring decisions, the ultimate in trusting that "it's only a piece of paper". My heart rate was high and my thinking quick; having arrived at class tired after a long day, I found myself excited and energized. I did the first couple in water-soluble pencil and I was moderately pleased with them. For the next two I used my fibre-tip pen. This is a high risk strategy: the pen is thick and dark and there is no way of hiding a badly placed stroke. As my tutor said, it is a fierce pen. But I love it. I love its definition and clarity, I love the boldness of its line. For the next one I tried charcoal which I found unpleasant to use, and for the last we were challenged to only use paint, no outline, no sketch. This makes it hard to create shape and light. Mine wasn't very successful but those who were demonstrated how beautiful this could be.
It was my two pen portraits which I was most proud of: There is much about them that could be improved, not least the proportions, but I love the overall effect. In my search for style, I think I could be one step closer. And my teacher even used the word "brilliant." I find it hard to hold on to compliments, but this one I heard and let myself enjoy.