Thursday 12 January 2012

IN WITH THE NEW, IN WITH THE OLD

A belated Happy New Year to anyone reading this blog!

After a rest over Christmas and the New Year I'm thinking of projects new and capping off projects old.

PROJECTS NEW


Here's my first work in progress of the new year. It's the piece I began just before Christmas, and it's provisionally called Private. It's a pure pen and ink piece on heavy grade watercolour paper, which is really nice to work on. I'm using larger pen nibs for this piece, partly because I want to progress this work as quickly as I can, I think the quicker I can get a feeling of having something under my belt the stronger my chances of actually achieving anything new this year. Also, the darker, bolder marks lend themselves nicely to the dark swirling lines and forms of the pine tree. Spiky and yet inviting at the same time. I like contradictions.

PROJECTS OLD

I was so pleased with Ink & Steel, and relieved that I'd managed to take something through from planning to exhibition stage. This may seem like a small thing to some impartial onlooker but it was significant for me, for a number of reasons.

I had some really nice feedback on the exhibition, but I was anxious at the end of it, that I had to close my exhibition on the morning of the 10th December instead of the end of the day. I really couldn't time it otherwise, and if I'd have known I would have put 9th December on the poster rather than the 10th. What made it worse for me was that I was told that a lady came in to see my exhibition after I had taken it down, which worried me no end as I really don't like to disappoint anyone.

So I had this idea, that it would be nice to make an on-line version of my exhibition, a kind of belated programme, which I will put on my website as a PDF to download and browse at leisure.

I've begun this now, and hope to have it up on my website, all being well, in the next week or two.