A visit to an art fair, and back to some abstract painting

Last Friday, I went to the annual International Art Zurich - Contemporary Art Fair. I was given a free ticket for two at work, and my Mum was happy to join me. It was already the 17th fair, but I have to admit that it was the first time I visited it. But I'm glad I did. It was really inspiring. The exhibitors were both galleries and individual artists, some from as far as Australia and Thailand, but also many national and local ones. There were lots of mediums and styles on show, and although not all of them were to my taste, I appreciated the high quality of the works. There were only about two or three paintings, which in my personal opinion, weren't very impressive and didn't really quite fit the high quality standard of the fair. But as I said, that's just my very personal opinion. I prefered the individual artist exhibitors to the galleries, and apart from the very inspiring work of theirs, I also found it interesting to see how they presented their work and themselves. I collected a lot of business cards, flyers, cards etc. It's always good to get some ideas of how these things can be done. You never know. It was also interesting, though, to see what kind of paintings/artists the galleries represented.

After the visit to the fair, my Mum and me walked through the cold, wettish and autumny city, looking for a place to have lunch, before taking the train back. Back home, I just felt inspired to go to my studio and take out some paint tubes. I've always liked abstracts, and I used to paint a lot more of them earlier, but much less recently. But now I felt like getting back to it again. I've mentioned in last week's post how our own expectations can often get in the way before we even start a drawing or painting. I think that abstract painting can help with overcoming those expectations, as it is a much more intuitive process. I enjoyed very much putting these first layers on, and I'm looking forward to the weekend now to add some more and see where it goes. Apart from the visit to the art fair, it's heavily insired by the season. I'm not a fan of yellow at all, at least not of a cold, lemony yellow. But all the deep golden yellows of the leaves outside have definitely made me grab those yellow paint tubes. And we get a lot of grey, foggy days with the clouds hanging low here too. I love autumn!

Polaroid Autumn

I love autumn. All the beautiful colours, the cooler temperature, the longer nights. It seems I have missed most of its glory, though, as autumn seems to have arrived here much earlier than further north, while I was in England. But I still managed to capture some of it with my favourite Polaroid camera, my SX-70 Alpha 1.

Charmouth beach stones - more drawing

This week, I spent two nights drawing for almost two hours. I'm trying to get (back) into a habit of drawing regularly, and spending more time in my studio. Especially in the evenings, when you're tired from work, it can be hard to motivate yourself to get off the sofa and pick up some pencils. Even if you actually like it, and know that it will make you feel so much better than just spending the entire evening in front of the tv. Why can it sometimes be so hard to shake off such bad and irrational habits? 

I've also been thinking a lot about style and techniques. How so often our inner critic/perfectionist puts those images of how your drawing or painting should look like before you even got the first brush stroke or pencil line down. How difficult it can be to put those expectations aside and just follow the flow. I know exactly how I would like to be able to paint or draw. And it doesn't always work. So I'm trying hard now to ignore that voice, and to approach my canvas or sketchbook without expectations (I even taped a reminder up on my easel), and just let it flow. To find out what comes naturally, and then take it from there. I had something else in mind when I started drawing the first stone, something that didn't involve blending and making it all smooth. But then I couldn't help picking up my blending stick, and I spent two evenings happily layering and blending and getting lost in details.

During our holiday, we went to Charmouth beach. One side of the beach is sand, the other side is stones, quite big ones, that make it quite difficult to walk (but is very popular with fossil hunters). I loved the beautiful big smothes stones with their white veins running through them, that were lying in between the other stones, and I took some photos of the them so that I could draw them later.

A wonderful holiday, and some hand drawings

I'm back from my holiday, and what a wonderful time we had! When I left two weeks ago, I expected it to be wet and miserable, but I couldn't have been more wrong. Almost two weeks of not a rain drop in sight, and more often than not, not a single cloud in the sky either. What a pleasant surprise. We made the best of it, exploring new places along the Dorset coast, re-visiting some old favourites, and even went up to London for a day. I was able to completely switch off and forget about everything. So much so, that I actually had to call my Mum to ask her to go to my home and look up the pin code for my banc card, as I couldn't for the life of me remember it. Completely gone. Unfortunately, after having returned back home on Tuesday, and back to work on Wednesday, the whole relaxing holiday feeling has already disappeared completely, and all the daily negative stuff, that I so successfully managed to forget about, has swept back in one single big wave.

But anyway. I took a sketchbook and some drawing materials with me (and visited the local art shop more than once). I took my sketchbook and pens with me a couple of times, but it was either too windy or we were too busy exploring for any sketching to be done. But I managed to do a few drawings some of the evenings, when I wasn't too exhausted (and a couple of watercolour sketches, which turned out so bad that no one will ever see them. Except N, who has already seen them, and wasn't impressed with them either). I've been wanting to practice some hand drawing, and with not much else on hand, that's what I did.

Of course I took loads of photos with my DSLR, and even some with my Polaroid SX-70, and I still have to go through them all. I'll probably post a few photo posts soon, but here's just a couple of shots, one from Brownsea Island, where we met some lovely red squirrels, and one from Charmouth, where I just couldn't get enough of the reflections in the low tide water on the beach.

Red Squirrel, Brownsea Island, Dorset

Charmouth Beach, West Dorset

As my happy holiday feeling quickly disappeared already the day after I got back from my holiday, I decided to keep the memories alive and fresh by posting the Polaroids I took over the next days. I have 30 photos, so it's going to be 30 days of happy holiday memories. I'll post them on Instagram and Twitter, and maybe Facebook too. Follow me, if you like (my new Twitter account is looking very sorry follower-wise, and I'm still waiting to finally reach the 100 likes milestone on my Facebook page). #30daysofholidaymemories.

I'm linking up again to the lovely Paint Party Friday. I'm afraid I posted my last post while I was already on holiday, and as I wasn't used to N's notebook/laptop with no mouse, I had to give up trying to visit and comment. But I hope to be better again this week.

Work in progress, or finished piece?

I'm enjoying a lovely holiday in England at the moment, but I managed to squeeze in some painting time at the weekend, between the laundry, packing and general getting ready for a holiday. This is the first time I started a painting on a black background, but I really like the effect. So much so, that I'm not sure where to go with it now, or rather, if I want to go anywhere else with it. It can often be hard to decide, when a painting is done. And sometimes, it is done long before you thought it might be. And even though I can see quite a few areas that could do with some fixing, I think I might just leave it as it is.

And now I'll go and practice drawing some noses.... But first we're off to Bournemouth for the day, to see the Alfons Mucha exhibition.

It's finally finished, and I'm off soon

I finally finished my landscape painting. All that was missing was a little house on top of the cliffs. Wouldn't that be a lovely place to live? Or at least to spend a holiday? Falling asleep to the sound of the waves at the bottom of the cliffs, breathing in the cool, fresh sea air on a walk on the beach first thing in the morning, maybe even dipping your toe into the water. I certainly wouldn't mind spending a week or two in such a place.

"Clifftop" - 40x60 cm, acrylics on canvas

The colours are quite muted, which makes the painting look a bit dark at times. But when light hits the canvas, the muted greens and yellow light up just as the grass and cliffs do when the sun suddenly emerges behind the clouds after a shower.

The painting was inspired by the Dorset coast, and while I'm not going to spend it in a lonely cliff top house, I'll be off very soon for a much needed two weeks holiday in that beautiful part of England. Hopefully, the weather will allow for lots of walks along the beach, cream teas outside, and maybe even the dipping of a toe in the sea. I'm not having very high hopes, though, and so I'm having a look around for what else we could do and where we could go. This place in Bournemouth looks pretty amazing, and there should be just about enough time to see the Alphonse Mucha exhibition before it ends.

It was about time those two sketchbooks got finished

I finally got to finishing those two sketchbooks. I can't believe how long it took me, speak of putting things off... I stitched all three books together back in spring (after having had the paper lying around for a good few months) and finished the first of them. In August, I finally made and added the covers to the other two (and forgot to post the blog post I had prepared), and then, almost a month later, the spines have been glued on at last, and all three are now finished. I'm certainly not short of empty sketchbooks, which is probably why I didn't feel in a hurry to get them done, but it still annoys me a little bit that it took me so long to do them. I'll have to try and get organised a bit better, and get things done. No wonder I'm not getting anywhere, if I keep on working like this!

But anyway. Done they are now, and I'm very happy with how they turned out.

Preparing the spines. As with the first one, I left an extra bit on both sides, top and bottom, to fold over and glue down, to make it a bit sturdier.

Then carefully glueing them on to one side, trying to avoid to get the glue all over the fabric. Normally, when I use glue, usually with paper, I don't only apply the glue underneath, but also on top, to really get it stuck down properly. This also adds a protective coat to the paper for when it is the top coat (as with the covers), or a good base for when painting over it. With the fabric, however, you can't add glue on top without, so extra care is necessary.

And here are the last two finished sketchbooks.

And here's all three finished of them. The red one is slightly smaller, as the paper sheets were a different size. It's the same height as the others, but shorter in width.

The paper of the red one also has a different colour, a very light grey, and it has slightly less pages. The pages of other two have light cream colour.

With this kind of binding (coptic stitch), they open nice and flat, which is of course very useful to draw and paint in them. I don't really like spiral bound sketchbooks but prefer the hard bound ones, so it's important to make sure that they are bound in a way that allows them to open flat.

Now I just have to dare using them and start drawing and sketching in them...