Thinking is easier than Doing

 ArtSkool has set us a summer project which i think I may explore thru the medium of dance.......as they say.  The above pic [dunno where it comes from which will not please the tutors] is very satisfying and I hope to paint something like, if I can choose an approach...........guess it is based on old Matisse' painting

 I would like to introduce some of the whimsy of Eileen Cooper to some of the work

 These figures that I have made recently will dance round a ruined tower I think.........

 Magdalena Abromovitch [I think I may have missed an itch or two] does these monumental figures, but the sculpture room at ArtSkool has a very laddish hard edged atmosphere which I think may be intimidating, making figures at home is possible but transportation is a problem.

 Kiki Smith has many and various explorations of the female

 Munch is not too hopeful in his Dance of Death...............

 Picasso says just get on with it!!

arrivals

Only thing that hasn't arrived is the sun.

sitting ducks

atrium

The sun is shining but I have got a bit dull.  End of term I suppose, glad it is finishing, sad it is finishing. No more ArtSkool till October!  Stupid.
We are putting up our first years exhibition in the Atrium, 3 floors of light filled tower, work gets a bit lost in the brightness to be honest.

 Fortunately mine is quite large and insistently black and white.....but between two toilets.

Tutor suggested I give Big Nuddey some hair, which was annoying, but I think maybe he was right.  I have named her End of Days. Other tutor suggested I left the chair there as part of the installation, tutors are like that.

I am very tired and irritable, don't know if it is old age or justifiable after getting up too early for a whole semester. 

Went in for my last portrait class on Friday and really would have liked to stick my big bad hog hair brush ........somewhere, don't know where, just tired and bad tempered.     Mother sat for 3 weeks, reading her kindle [one of Ann Cleeves crime stories set in the Shetlands] and was very patient, which possibly also wound me up. 

Also some of the other students are very good, so I feel very small..........

Had a long chat with the sculpture tutor, which consoled me briefly, [he is very attractive] till having taken 2 paces down the corridor I realised had solved nothing at all.  He should be a politician.

I can't make up my mind whether to do painting and sculpture next year, or just painting.  The sculpture room is very laddish, and the tutor loves chatting to the chaps, and admiring their welding. I need a regular sit down tutorial and other students to network with, to focus me and gee me up.

I have been isolating myself lately, trying to get work finished, plus watching TV and sleeping when ever poss. so maybe the summer holidays have come just in time.

Have started stitching some pieces for the exhibition in July, soothing running stitches.

end of days

Had a really nasty fluey cold which left me fed up and wondering just why am i bothering. 

Not sure I know the answer, but the sun has come out and my lady tutor noticed I was depressed and gave me a big hug.  Unlike my 2 male tutors who strode over my dead body without breaking stride.  Artists are rarely team players, lady tutor whispered in my ear.

Partly it is because the end of semester is nigh. 

Since I am Part Time/half price I am not featuring in the final assessment exhibition, thus feel left out!  Also male tutor instructs us to clear all our work/rubbish from the building after the exhibition, thus I am forced to accept that my blood letting and head banging to produce "work" will only result in full recycling bins.

Have one more male tutor day, and two more with trainee lady tutor, whom I have learnt to appreciate, even tho she pronounces everyone's work as "awesome" rather than - where's the bin..........she is doing her training year, so produces lesson plans and individual tuition. 

She'll grow out of that in time.  We are doing portraits with her, so this is my first attempt at my mother, whom i persuaded to sit for us.  Ma quite enjoyed meeting new people - finding them quite agreeable was a pleasant surprise to her. Dunno what she expected, more of Me maybe.

Will start a new painting of her tomorrow, this one will perhaps get re-painted - or binned......or both

We have a Summer Project to tide us over, plus a Textile Art exhibition or 2 coming up. Daughter and grandson are due next month.

A person jumped off the bridge last week, he missed the river and hit the road,  I plan a painting of the two decaying bouquets placed at the foot of the bridge stretching it's grey cement to the blue sky.  That'll cheer me up.

more work needed

Back to Art Skool on Monday, with a cold generously donated by Him Indoors. I look somewhat like the lady painted below, but she is just a random pic off the web which I experimented with, in my first go at Oils!  I bought some Oil Bars, very much fun, like big soft crayons but are oil paint and wax, which, it is claimed dry faster.  Watched a UTube video to learn process, as obviously it is below tutors to  indulge in such practises as tutoring.

She looked haunted in the pic as you can see?,  I painted her thinking of a concentration guard standing trial...........looks more like a waitress who has dropped the cakes.

 Callie kept me company.

 I have been thinking of the Ice Age Art exhibition at the BM, so tried to have a go at a rock carving thing by making a plaster mould from clay in a box.  Tutor helped me make the box, being as I am a poor woman with no skill with nails [well that's about true really] but of course he had his pride and made it so meticulously, with so many nails and glue I could hardly break her out.
 She looks a bit jolly, so i added blood....lots of significance and gravitas, but not sure it quietens her down any.

 Big Nuddey went down well with tutor, but still work to do, surprisingly enough.  Also managed to fit plaster man into car and got him to sculpture room , only breaking one arm on the way.  Boo.  Tutor told me ...more work is needed, so had about him with saw and scraper thing [plaster man, not tutor] and bandaged his arm with mud rock.
While we were working some students came down from RSA to crit some of the 3rd years work.
A man sized banana received some very weird esoteric suggestions, mostly referencing penises, maker opined it was just a banana, which received silent applause from moi.
Daisy thought it was all rubbish and concentrated on telling the birds outside what for.  They ignored her as she doesn't go outside.  Some females have mouths bigger than their aspirations.

Thatcher's funeral is on gog at the mo, see above.

don't stare at the sun

Being a self starter in any area is exhausting at times.  The voice in your head doesn't help, asking, on a loop of derision, why are you even bothering. 

Having paid stupid university fees and joined a group moving erratically forward [sometimes in the same direction], and above all being required to prioritise the enterprise above straightening the curtains does help, I find.

However I get more work done in the holidays, without those pesky tutors and their power point presentations.

Goodness knows if I can get CW into the car [named after my slim son]   I like the Richard Hawley song so i thought I would make something from it...................

 Thinking of ambiguous titles will hopefully add some subtlety to my work!!

 Have been adding a slight tinge of pink to Big Nuddey [example of my subtlety] as if she is just alive, not dead yet, like so many of us, .......needs more sun perhaps?  However today the whining had to stop as the temp. went into double figures, 10 and the sun was warm.  We walked by the river in a daze.