Last week I played a lot drawing with my phone (having just seen the David Hockney exhibition where I could sit and watch him “draw” on the ipad / iphone.
What I love about it was I learnt how much perseverance can go into something remarkably simple. And how much layers can make a difference (this i knew) to a simple piece (because they can add such complexity within that).
I did one draft of a still life with oil pastels onto black canvas (yes, the photo below makes it look chocolate brown, that’s my camera doing it magic work).
Today I took that still life and added that same kind of complexity using oil pastel (which is what the whole piece is done in, aside from accidental acrylic splotch).
I allowed myself to make the still life more abstract.
I called it Jug Disco because once i emerged from my close focus i noticed that all of the pots kind of jiggled a little, like they were dancing. I’m not really a still life painter, and I have a fear of drawing things no one recognises. Played today with the bladder from inside a box of water (a goon bag, if you know what that is) because I’d seen Julien Meagher’s work with goon bags. I really couldn’t make it look anything more than a blob. But a jug, a bowl, a vase, we recognise their shapes more easily. So I’m sticking with the traditional still lives till I get excited about something else.
Really am enjoying the switch of medium to oil pastels (as well as the new medium of phone-drawing).
