Some paintings

 A brief retrospective of what I have been working on,  in and if for the past year whilst looking after two gorgeous little boys. 

Around the web in 10 clicks

 Some interesting articles, exhibitions and thoughts on all things art and design this week:

An exhibition that I would love to be able to see, at the MoMA museum, is simply titled Cézanne Drawing, as in Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), a very neutral title for the show featuring an exploration of his drawings, using paint to build up studies and still life drawings, exploring drawing portraits of loved ones and so on. The drawings have a sense of lightness of touch, of freedom and time spent just exploring the process, shapes and lines. 
This wonderful essay/article from Two Coats of Paint features lovely nuggets of information on Cézanne's life and how his work came to be without being too pretentious and filled with jargon. The essay is writen by  Laurie Fendrich, also a painter who brings some clear insight of his work into the text. Well written, lovely painters, nibbles of information and some lovely images of his drawings, what more could you ask for? 

Well I would love to be able to see the exhibition, but Covid, newborn baby, life...the internet will have to be my lens for looking at art for now. 

Some beautiful paintings/drawings that are full of flurries of colour, pastels and paint strokes, speak of vast windy days in the country or on rivers and lakes, fitting not so neatly into landscapes, but also crossing borders into abstraction and expression. The painter Ashley Garretts really brings out the wild weather in her landscape drawings and paintings. Really love her work too. 

Sculpture, plus colour, fluidity and of course that beautiful and strange substance and material called resin, all feature in the work of Ben Godward. Again I found his work from a Two Coats of Paint article/post. Jonathan Stevenson's comparison of Godward's sculptures to ice pops and giant sweets is just awesome! 
Yet again such an energetic feel to the work, and a sense of whimsy and childish delight and fun with a brand new pack of felt tips of crayons. I love the way he fixes translucent layers of colour with each other, building up layers in a way that makes me think of gesture painters, abstract expressionism, mark making and colour explored, action painting especially seems to have maybe inspired this sculpture artist, his works are very physical, and many full of motion too. Again, another artist whose work really needs to be explored and discovered up close. His work from the exhibition at the Slag Gallery, reminds me of the beautiful crystals you would find in a computer game, crystals that make up a digital landscape, or indeed need to be collected by a spunky and amusing Bandicoot with a fruit bazooka.  

Lastly Antoine’s Organ by Rashid Johnson, highlighted by a post on Two Coats yet again (they always have the good stuff), is one that begs to be seen up close, to be wandered around, to go up close and photograph from angles, to look from a distance, from high above in a birds eye view way too. Reminds me of the botanical gardens in Edinburgh and brilliant greenhouses stuffed full and filled with green plants, light and life. 

Photoshop 02: Borders

Having found and signed up to the Adobe Daily Challenge series, I've had a look at one tutorial to try out, watched the video and given it a go.
The video is wonderfully presented, really straightforward and quite engaging too. 

The tutorial is relatively straight forward but a bit visually fiddly. It useful shows you how to use the rulers briefly, along with above tool/options mentioned.
I ignored the using the Libraries pane to drag and drop images though as I want to primarily use my own photos anyway. So instead the images I wanted to use were opened to copy and paste from.

This will be useful to show students how to add borders or develop edits that are relatively straight forward but can have the composition manipulated to produce some very interesting results. I ignored the using the Libraries pane to drag and drop images though as I want to primarily use my own photos anyway. So instead had the images I wanted to use open as tabbed images to copy and paste from.
This will be useful to show students how to add borders or develop edits that are relatively straight forward but can have the composition manipulated to produce some very interesting results.

 

Gradient added to develop space for text.Could this be used to insert quotes or lines from a poem?

Links:
Adobe/Behance Photoshop Daily Challenge: https://www.behance.net/challenge/photoshop

About Adobe Libraries: https://www.adobe.com/uk/creativecloud/libraries.html 

Photoshop Daily Creative Challenge #01: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taXFBXHqqBg

  

Photoshop 01: Actions Panel

Learning how to batch resize images...and use the batch edit function AND learn how to record actions or processes used on one image to do the resizing.
I found this excellent tutorial here:
https://enviragallery.com/how-to-batch-resize-images-in-photoshop/

Then I went off to develop some smaller images for use on my website (which is still under major construction, its needs plastering, painting and filling in with work).

I have wondered if it's worth while making such a tutorial a resource for my teaching file, but really, if someone else has already done the awesome work of putting together a really straightforward guide, why should I repeat it?

Thinking this could be manipulated to then have colour painted onto images automatically, but using the colour picker tool to pick out colours at random for each image, so in essence you get a unique colour palette each time you use the action.

Unfortunately, this didn't work.

Photoshop goes through the process, and even flickers through colours from the time the action was originally recorded, but nothing comes up on the image. 

I checked to make sure that the other actions were still working, and of course the resize action in the screenshots below worked perfectly. 

But maybe there are other ways of using the Actions tool to create some automated starting points to work with?

Also I've finally updated my mixed media gallery with the Mix and Match series:
https://hennajaved.squarespace.com/

A note going forward...

Blowing off the dust from this blog. I need to consider how to do things differently, and how to manage it all when this is all over. When I'm back at work. Where the grind at times, seems to never stop. Maybe that's me though, I need to stop and say nope, not doing any more of this. 1: Keep painting once a day 2: Keep drawing once a day 3: Keep training once a day (TKD) 4: Keep reading (and don't stop even in term time!) I will come back to this post later I think. And maybe laugh at the concept that this can be done.

Until I'm back at work, I think I'll concentrate on the blog a bit. First thing, I want to create a clear identity for this blog. It's all about colour and pattern, yes, but then there is something else very important to me, art history. Not always looking into the past with cobwebs, but the near past, the present, the possible future and so on. Pen and Paper > Zine > Collaboration (meaning I'm going to have to develop some links so I can collaborate with others). Pattern and Surface > Blog > selflessly solo > updates on my practice as an artist > exploring the web and the world (for now just the web) > exhibition reviews > ideas and more ideas!!

Found brown packaging

Brown as a colour is under appreciated, sometimes it is the point blunt of racial discrimination, a colour used to cause harm and insult, but here it takes on a captivating elegance it has always had with gold.
Looking at a box of coloured pencils or a packet of wet felt tips, it is nearly always the only writing or drawing tool that is sharp or full of colour.

Road and Pavement Works

Collected pavement markings for road/pavement works that were due. I really liked the use of bright oranges and limish greens at the bottom to pinpoint drainage points. Quite powerful colours. 

More on this later.

Tacked It

Photographed my wall before carefully taking down every inch of collected and found materials that appealed to me through colour and so on, to start fresh this year coming up and try to keep it as a monthly thing. Collect, stick, photograph and then peel off at the end of the month. Could this in itself become a live board of inspiration? A collectors board of stuff, graphics, colour, prints, textures, looking at materiality within the everyday?

I miss have an artist's studio which is seperate from coming home from work and just resting (not that I have time for that - nor does anyone really). If I struggle to find time to create, paint or stitch, I can at least collect?
Maybe have it all stitched together into some kind of mixed media collage board by the end?

Windows Tile Glitching Moments

When I get a slightly colourful and line filled scroll bar on my internet browser or just when using a program on my computer, and then of course when my phone does this:

                                                                                                                Over here is how it should look
                Up here is how it looked when glitching

It's not done this in a while now sadly as I like the idea of the gradient, but those colours are a lifeless combination. Pop in some reds next time Cortana

Sketching text pointers

In charcoal is so much fun! Then even more fun with pen, no really, it is. 

Except for the O, S, G, Q, it's working out. 

I need to work on drawing up those letters though, 

that and proportion. 

Dig out squared paper and enlargement technique maybe.

 Also must work on stuff in the mornings, night light is not so good. 

Pointers for drawing/sketching text: 

Look at each letter individually.
Note shapes of each line.
Look at negative and positive space.
Note round shapes. How round is round? Slightly angled in places? 

Look at serif/sans serif where edges of text are, are they rounded, or blunt edges?
Look at proportion, is it accurate?
Spacing one letter and then the next, spaces between consistent with font spacing, which often is not the same as leaving a gap of a few millimeters between each letter.
Use pen or pencil as measuring device.

Be quick with sketches first.
Lightly sketch top and bottom and mid section guidelines (wish I'd done this above).

Collage and text work

Work on this text based project is going way too slowly at the moment, 

I need to figure out how to move forward with this text. 

Now that I am working on a larger piece using image maker, 

I'm finding it tricky to stick to text only, 

should I be incorperating colour and motifs too? 

Graphics, clouds and stars?  

So this is a start at exploring such options by

using magazine imagery and some quick drawings.

Collecting text onto paper to photocopy for some 

image maker based work that is on-going: 

Text Artists and Writers of Note in Mousse Magazine no 46

 Found an old copy of Mousse Magazine at work weeks ago and finally got around to scouring it for ideas and research points in the region of artists and words. Specifically it is issue number 46 - Artists' Words, December 2014 - January 2015.
Selected below are some photos of the pages that are points of interest:

Ian Hamilton Finlay:
His concrete poetry doesn't literally speak or say too much in the above poems, he experiments with the text itself, the forms it takes, the composition. But some of his other works are said to be charming and full of thoughts, hopefully later this month I will get to see some of his words he left in the landscape of the garden and lands he lived in, in Scotland. Ideas of mixing words with land and space would be an interesting step away from paper.

 Short phrases, to the point, sweet.

Poetry has been really interesting for me to look at again, after so long, having only ever really read or studied it at school and in class, but alwasy enjoying most of the poems in the beloved 'Anthology' that we got to draw, doodle on, make notes on, and then couldn't take to the exam, I miss my copy and I wonder what happened to it?

Marcel Broodthaers worked as a poet and writer till his 40s around about, then his poems became visual too, he played with sculpture and presenting his ideas using humour. One of his first visual works was a sculpture, where he had taken an unsold book of his poems titled Pense-Bête 

and embedded it in wet plaster, after having classed himself as a failed poet before this 

(a bit premature really?). 

 

John Giorno was an artist with a strange perspective on certain topics that I feel strongly against (ie drugs etc), but I have to admit his works are interesting if only as they mix collage and words and text with colour. The square format is a lively choice for his works.
Use of different sizes to emphasise meaning again used here.

Again another artist, Maurizio Nannucci, who takes text out of the flattened realm of paper or board or painting and takes it into the space to lie upon walls and positioned in strange little nooks, a meeting of text and architecture that is different to graffiti art. Though this text piece is playful, his lit up works sculpturally located have a more impressive presence.

Ramond Pettibon's above snapshot is deceptive, aside from the little remark he includes as part of the drawing, there are no black and white cartoon style drawings of people or things or spaces. His choice of words can also be borrowed from other writers like Ruskin and so on. Check out his drawings though, their very gritty and dark. 

Dan Graham's structures of steel mirror and glass are fascinating, even their grouped name of pavilion sound semi ancient, but his words are what I'm really interested in, but the idea of making words into 3D pieces out of wood or sculptural materials to be placed here and there is a good one. And they are just words put next to each other, they all seem to realate but they don't make a coherent sentence in the usual way.

Alison Knowles, yes at last a female artist! Born in Amercia in the 1970s, her practice has been ever changing and diverse, but her books words and her looking at text here really stand out, compared to the above she is thinking of presenting books in non conventional ways, looking beyond a single poem or few words chosen and creating many of them and then thinking how to issue them as a book, or to spread them out into the world, check out Bean Rolls. Above is a text piece she made with James Tenney using computer based technology. Often classified as the first computerised poem, Knowles wrote out lists of words and these were then fed into an early IBM computer which then selected sepcific words from that list using data it had at the time.  
Working in performance too she is an artist of many talents, and one comment I loved in this article is her obsession with books and reading. A fellow book bibliophile who has met some amazing people like John Cage and Albers. 

Nani Balestrini is an Italian writer who has be remarked on being important to many various magazines and within literary circles in Italy. He has exhibited as a visual artist and is a writer whose books have been added to my tbr list (a long list at this point). His ideas as visited and examined in the guardian article around reproduction and the Gutenberg press and similar press ideas during that time period are making me consider the idea of originality, and single unique works within text based work, and readings.

Any comments, artist or writer recomendations around text art, concrete poetry or anything relating to the above, please feel free to leave a comment.


Sources:
http://moussemagazine.it/issue.mm?id=52

On Ian Hamilton Finlay...
http://www.ianhamiltonfinlay.com/ian_hamilton_finlay.html

On Marcel Broodthaers...
http://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/1542 
http://www.artspace.com/magazine/news_events/exhibitions/marcel-broodthaers-at-moma-53532 
http://www.moma.org/m/tours/50/tour_stops/621?locale=en
http://www.artnews.com/2016/03/15/when-is-sense-nonsense-on-fischliweiss-at-the-guggenheim-and-marcel-broodthaers-at-moma/

On John Giorno...
http://bombmagazine.org/article/3179/john-giorno

On Maurizio Nannucci...
http://www.micheledidier.com/index.php/gb/mfc-exhibitions/mfc-archive/mfc-exhibition-maurizio-nannucci.html
http://www.arteecritica.it/archivio_AeC/72/articolo02-eng.html 

On Ramond Pettibon...
http://blog.art21.org/2007/09/19/raymond-pettibon-here%E2%80%99s-your-irony-back-the-big-picture-at-zwirner/#.V6HkQ6JYFOY
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Pettibon

On Dan Graham...
http://www.lissongallery.com/artists/dan-graham
http://www.walkerart.org/collections/artists/dan-graham
http://www.artspace.com/magazine/interviews_features/qa/dan-graham-52392

On Alison Knowles...
http://www.aknowles.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alison_Knowles
http://www.fluxusheidelberg.org/interviewwithalisonknowles_v1.3.pdf

On Nani Balestrini...http://old.nannibalestrini.info/ (might need to put it through google translate to view) 
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/feb/13/nanni-balestrini-tristano-novel-technology

 

Adam and Hawa

Gingerbread Hawa

7 days to make the bread,

the eyes, the nose and then the head.

14 hours to kneed the body,

the arms and then the legs.
28 minutes to bake in all,

nice and crisp and then wait till cold.





w/n: 
The idea of the act of creation, creating something, putting time and energy and your own days/life into that act. 7 days refers to Allah creating the world and resting, and the 14 refers to the number of hours a person is awake/works/plays. 28 minutes refers to 30 minutes, a way of telling time, half an hour becomes a sign, a marker of what is to come.  
Hawa is Eve's Muslim name, or Arabic equivalent. Both of whom are mentioned in the holy Quran, having been created, Allah took a rib from Adam and created Eve (did that hurt? maybe we should call it rib break and not heartache?), he then taught them how to plant and plow and sow seeds upon the Earth, there is no mention of sin or in the holy book in regards to Hawa. 
Allah taught the first man and woman how to make food, and bread. Bread the staple of a persons diet in any country, it is a common type of food that unites us, chappati from south east asia, breads of brilliant large fluffy and generouse shapes in Africa, to the everyday sliced bread you can find in a supermarket or in Greggs, or great baked sweet and flavour filled breads of Germany and France. 
Yum.

Black and Blue - an inspirational zine

Words have become my constant, as an artist and writer.
At last.

The above images are from a zine I created specifically for a writer at Nanowrimo during the July campnanowrimo. I will upload it at some point and have it available online hopefully, but if anyone would like to have a digital copy just send me a message or leave a comment.
Spent a full day working on the zine and then putting it together was an interesting process, playing with and resizing images and text so the file was a smaller size and easily transferable. 
Idea of the zine is that is it an inspiring goodybag with images and words and phrases. Black and Blue is a play on that idea of physcially being beaten, a great metaphor, but one I wanted to soften and maybe tilt onto its head, implying that the process of writing can somtimes make you sore and leave you with bruises or areas that are are sesntitive too.
Again note the play with fonts and found words. 

[Archive] John Lewis Summer 2014 Edition

Brilliant geometrics - imagine geometrics made out of basketry weaving....

 pink and gold wth this fish like scales repeat

love the skirt and trousers with the florals drawn like on white fabric.

Vibrant colours and beautiful florals.

John Lewis (2014) Edition. Summer 2014.