Sunday 30 January 2011

Visionary Ambitions

Vision Boards
Whether you want to design a garden, a menu for a special meal, redecorate your home or devise some other type of creative activity, mood or vision boards can help to structure our ideas.

Recently friends have been using them as reminders for their goals for their future, from jobs, places to live and relationships. Some believe that by making a Vision Board you increase the chances of those things happening because the process involves thinking about what is most important to you which in turn helps you to keep focussed on that.

I don't think it will in itself change anything... it's not a magic spell, but as something to refer to see if we're making progress I can see it's merits so I thought I'd give it a whirl. There is nothing to stop me adapting it or editing it as and when I wish.

I've named my Vision Board 'Artistic Development Dreams' and very simply cut and pasted examples of previous artwork as the foundation for where I want to go next. The simple headings are to remind me of the areas and some themes I'd like to develop.


Fine Printing: 
I'd like to refine print marks so that things I print are crisper, sharper impressions. There are several printing disciplines I can use to achieve this including etching (for which I'd need to invest in a press), lino cut, screen printing, mask printing as well as monoprinting.

Precision Drawing: 
I've always tended to be lazy when it comes to accuracy so it will be all the more of an achievement to produce more drawings whereby I sit, observe and concentrate hard. Usually I only manage this when in a class and I have a tutor pushing me to keep at it, so it's important that I learn to achieve this for myself.

Pen & Ink: 
This is also to help me develop my accurate drawing skills but neither of these goals precludes me from scribbling freestyle.

Photographic Play: 
Like many people I tend to point the camera and snap without understanding or fully utilizing all the different functions and techniques that the camera as a tool offers. I spent about a year experimenting with photo-editing sometime ago to see what I could make from the images I took. For me photographs are a way or recording things I see that I like which might inspire say a painting.
This editing is simply to remind me not to let those ideas slip into oblivion. A future vision board might be all about developing camera skills; for now though it's not top of my list of things to develop.

Pottery Forms: 
This is my newest and most compelling creative endeavour. It's reaching compulsive levels. Among things I'd like to achieve here are to continue to explore shapes, forms, patterns, decoration and to learn 'tricks of the trade'. The ideas list is endless so it's tempting to place pottery at the top of my list for development aims but...

Painting Techniques: 
Conscious that pottery is beginning to dominate all my creative time, I'm anxious that other forms of creativity don't get abandoned, and particularly drawing and painting. Painting I came to relatively late as during my degree I had concentrated on illustrative disciplines. Among the things I want to explore are: figure and portrait painting, abstract painting and most of all to learn as many different ways of applying paint. Using resists, a spatula and masking are all there in the mix.

Colour & Design: 
Uniting all these and running through creativity are colour and design. I love exploring different colour combinations and also challenging myself to limit my palette to two or three colours no matter what medium I'm using.

Finally I've included reminders about pattern, texture, form, shape, structure, tone and doodles. These are the foundation stones to all creative activities. For me, doodling has been a way of noting down many an idea as well as leading to design elements and artworks in their own right.

I'm now off to create another Vision Board... this time collecting pictures of all the things that inspire me. From images of nature to paintings from Picasso, Klee and Kandinsky for their sense of design; Caravaggio and Vermeer for their quality of light; etches and drawings from Durer, sculpture from Moore and Hepworth, tribal and primative art, screenprinters, lino printers... who knows what I will find to inspire my next piece!




Saturday 15 January 2011

Quotations - Words of Wisdom 4


"The fool wonders, the wise man asks." Benjamin Disraeli.


"If we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome." Anne Bradstreet.


"Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum." Oliver Wendell Holmes.


"Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads." Henry David Thoreau.

"Trouble is only an opportunity in work clothes." Henry J. Kaiser.


"The key to everything is patience. You get the chicken by hatching the egg - not by smashing it." Ellen Glasgow.


"If you can't change your fate, change your attitude." Amy Tan.


"First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do." Epictetus.


"Think about all the beauty still left around you and be happy." Anne Frank.


"Sometimes small things lead to great joys." Samuel Joseph Agnon.


"The moments of happiness we enjoy take us by surprise. It is not that we seize them, but that they seize us." Ashley Montagu.


"The best way of making your dreams come true is to wake up." Paul Valery.


"Remember that happiness is a way of travel - not a destination." Roy M. Goodman.


"Think contentment the greatest wealth." George Shelley.


"Creativity is the sudden cessation of stupidity." Edwin Land.


"Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties." Erich Fromm


"Experience is more convincing that logic." Isaac Abravanel.


"Let us take men as they are, not as they ought to be." Franz Schubert.


"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers.


"Remember, a closed mouth gathers no foot." Steve Post.


"Minds are like parachutes. They only function when open." Thomas Dewar.


"Don't accept that others know you better than yourself." Sonja Friedman.