...the year is over

2005 came to an end, and I didn't quite achieve my goals. I did however make good progress on many things and had a lot of art related fun and satisfaction.

I painted two oil paintings
I wrote 15,000 words of a novel
I wrote loads and loads of stuff on my blog.
I took lots of photos just for art's sake

I'll update this post with links to these gems of work sometime.

So where do I go from here?

I'm not remotely interested in stopping, but was thinking the project needs a new name. Then I decided that every year should be Art Year, so I'll suffix them with the actual year like this:

Art Year 2005
Art Year 2006

etc.

Next post will be my new goals for Art Year 2006.

Painting Started

Yay, finally started painting my picture.

Done an undercoat layer here.

Still no progress!

End of month update.

Well, there is a bit of progress, but it's not really very varied. I haven't painted or composed and music.

I have however written quite a few words on my blog http://se71.org/blog

Writing is what I have most time to do, and is most easily edited. Editing tools for music are pretty complicted, and taking paint off a canvas well nigh impossible, so I like writing a lot.

Expect more of the same for the next month, and maybe painting if I can get out in the garden one weekend.

Painting Procrastination

There is a site called 43things and this post says exactly what I feel:

"I’ve got paint, canvas, easel, brushes, solvent, rags, apron, and space. I’ve got ideas—and I’ve got time, obviously, because here I am goofing off online. Why am I so cowardly about it? ... Something about the idea of oil just spooks me."

I'm scared of making a complete mess of it. I need another canvas maybe so that I can easily throw the first effort away.

Painting Tools

Went to the craft shop near Taplow and bought some supplies.

Got the linseed oil, turpentine and an extra brush, along with a small tabletop easle. Also got painting by numbers kits for the girls to encourage a bit of dabbling from them.

Saw a small oil painting similar to what I intend to do for sale in Windsor, for £595.

What's keeping me :-)

Writing

Things have been a bit slow on the art front recently; I have been procrastinating as I expected I would, but some irregular progress has been made.

Inspired by the Sunday Telegraph Magazine, which has a page called "In your Own Words", I decided to write a humourous article. The article should be about 600 words, but mine came in at over 1000. So I got DJ to read it and savagely cut it back.

The resulting article is I think quite good, and I hope to pluck up the courage to send it in for consideration as soon as I can decide what format they might like it in.

I'm not sure whether this effort can be used as a monthly goal, but writing is definitely something I wanted to do more of. Perhaps I'll use it as a precursor to February, and make that month's target to write a series of six articles for publishing. I've even had a go at a second triathlon related piece!

Painting subject

This is a bit of a no brainer for me, as I can't draw, so anything like portraits, still life or landscapes would be pretty rubbish. I suppose I could claim to be deliberately bad, but I imagine the result will not be something I'd like on my wall, so I'm not going down that road.

So I've decided to do a seascape, a very simple one with no rough seas or waves dashing against rocks. I have a print I really like by an artist called Doutreleau called "After The Storm" I've found a link to it here, but if that link breaks I've grabbed it


It's pretty minimal and uses not too many colours and I will emulate this somewhat, though I'm aiming for a rougher texture.