augustus 2022

i wish i was better at sharing my process.
i wish i knew more about my creative process.
i wish i didn't find them so important, all those things.

i'm reading martin gayford's newest david hockney-book & it is wonderful. but it is also confusing me enormously.

yesterday i did some drawings influenced by reading the hockney-book. his line drawings (the ones inspired by van gogh's drawings). i was definitely going to draw again, today, because i loved doing them, so i went looking for pictures to use for reference. 

and then i ended up taking out my oil pastels & ended up doing a tiny landscape with them.

i wish i... i wish i had the one medium i loved & wanted to properly explore. it feels like i'm constantly jumping around, and i don't know why --

said i; while also knowing i am not at all a planner, not a long term-thinker, & i definitely do not have any other reason to draw than... joy.

which is why i'm loving the hockney-book so much because he seems to embody that philosophy; that making art should be joyful.

martin gayford writes:

Hockney (..) believes that pleasure is a requirement for art. He deplores the puritanical attitude of the art world to enjoyment (..).

DH: I was in San Francisco once, and a curator said to me that he hated Renoir. I was shocked by that. I said, ‘What word would you use to describe your feelings for Hitler then?’ Poor old Renoir. He hadn't done anything terrible: he'd painted some pictures that pleased a lot of people. It's awful to say you hate him for doing it!

*

a tiny voice inside my head did say to do some more work with oil pastels, recently. last week, i think. my issue usually is colour & i'm really trying to deal with that, to work with that. i was thinking i could do colour studies; look at work by artists i admire, maybe do some master-studies. i was particularly thinking about monet's landscapes, and van goghs trees. i was going to fill a sketchbook with oil-pastel-landscapes & line explorations. and then i fell asleep & abandoned the plan, it seems.

line was my obsession for the last few days, it started before i began reading the hockney-book & the book has enhanced the interest. i was ready to order new sketchbooks, in fact i just ordered some, and a new ecoline colour (deep green) -- & then i received a message that the sketchbooks are not in stock at the moment, if maybe i can wait.

these problems are tiny but they tire me out. (it doesn't help that it's been too hot for about a week now; temperatures over thirty degrees celsius. my body does not cope.)

anyway. here's a picture of my oil pastels:

*

i actually figured the thing out, the drawing or oil pastels thing: i can do both. i can actually do both. i can do whatever the fuck i want. so i will do both.

or i could try drawing with oil pastels.