Well, to link in with the theme of the last post. Which is something that I haven't done for a while. It's only fair to mention that my feeble attempt at applying for the Sky Landscape Artist of the Year Competition 2016 was a failure. None of us like rejection, and like many others I felt the full force of the disappointment.
It took courage to decide to enter, and to find amongst my shed load of art, some pieces worthy of consideration. It took even more courage to fill in the convoluted Application Form. Only to find out that my chosen image sizes were all wrong for the Online Entry. It all became a tad stressfull, and I debunked from the process and paid someone to re-photograph the art and thereafter produce it in a file size that lay between the minumim and maximum megabytes permitted. Before regaining the courage to submit the work and press 'Send'.
I don't regret the Landscape Artist process, because I gave it my best shot. My unworthy submissions included a watercolour of the wake of a cruise ship leaving Venice, a mixed media scene of Venice with some washing hanging out that was not too disimilar to the scenes that were often painted by Whistler (but I hasten to add, that I'm no Whistler), and a pencil drawing of a sunken boat, that was included to simply show that I could draw.
What would I enter today, if indeed the Sky Landscape Artist Competition was beginning instead of currently broadcasting weekly on television? I think that it's a given; that my 'after' Turner, 'Fishermen at Sea' painting (which I completed in acrylic), would be my 'prove that I can paint and draw image'. The pastel drawing on the watercolour base of a sort of Aberdyfi scene would be a likely contender, along with my charcoal take of John Piper's 1939 sketch of 'the Lower Pirian Falls' on the Hafod Estate in Wales. Maybe the Inktense Pencil drawing of the coastal light house scene would appear instead of the Aberdyfiesque image. I don't really know, as it's all choices, and I'm not particularly good at making them.
The thing being; that my failed attempt consisted of a watercolour, a pencil drawing, and a mixed media of mono printing, chalk, and ink. Whereas a current attempt would consist of an acrylic painting, a charcoal drawing and either a soft pastel over watercolour or an Inktense Pencil drawing. Now, I don't think that you can get more diverse than that! And in many ways that diversity sort of sums up where I am with the arty thing at the moment.
If it isn't Inktense Pencils, then it's watercolour. If it isn't watercolour, then it's watercolour markers. And if the markers aren't out, well that means that maybe the soft colouring pencils are. But that doesn't mean that the Acrylics have been put away. Nope, good old 'Cryla' and its variants get an occasional run out as well.
Here's the current piece being worked up in Palette Knife, using Acrylic on Gesso prepared Plywood.
ArtRba Photograph: Palette knife on board
Although the larger areas have been completed, in many ways this image is still in its initial stages. There's a fair bit of artistry that needs to be applied to the central theme. And as such the amount of work left to do; will far outweigh the time taken to get to this stage.
