Up all night

Detail from a recent work on paper.

Had one of those 'brain won't shut off so don't even think about trying to sleep' episodes after climbing into bed last night. The only remedy was to get up and write as much of that stuff down as I could. All of it was art-related and the pages of my art journal from this session were filled with random notes about projects and other things I couldn't stop thinking about for some reason.

From 1:45am until about 3:15am, I filled 7 pages with ideas for projects that I'm already pursuing or might pursue in the near future with painting, mixed media, works on paper, photography, printmaking as well as a major reorganization of the works in my studio. Getting it all written down was a good thing. Now, all I have to do is dust off my alchemy skills to make more hours in the day in order to get these things done...

bubbling up

Studio table top with new things in progress. Working on some mixed-media collages with old photos on paper. In addition to my painting, I've been in the mood to satisfy my other urges in an effort to see where they might lead.

In this case, I'm making use of old photos that have just been sitting around my apartment for the past few years. They're mostly blurry, out of focus shots that I'm not attached to for any sentimental reasons, so why not give them a second life?

There's a lot going on in my head art-wise and it's taking a few different approaches to my materials to accommodate it all. I'll find out what's on the other side of the rabbit hole when I get there...

Photo with notes here

Then again...

Seriously, I needed more sleep than I thought last night. Sometimes, ideas that come to you in a sleep-deprived state of mind should sometimes remain just ideas. For example, I set about working on some of the ideas I wrote about in my last post today. Sadly, I remembered that I'd already engaged said ideas last year sometime and had proof of their failure.

Basically, the 'stack' drawings with graphite and oil stick are best left to that medium; not enlarged from the 12" x 12" format they were originally done in and defintirely not with other materials. They just don't work. Today, found a couple of experimental works on paper where I used acrylic paint and medium in an attempt to replicate the smaller graphite stack drawings. The newer attempts completely lacked the spirit of the earlier drawings in two ways; the beauty of the graphite over-laid with oil stick was completely lost when I used ink or acrylic paint with brushes. The size, quality of line, and beauty of the pencil lines softened with a layer of clear or white oil stick are integral to the successes I had with the older drawings, most of which I did in 2005.

Some drawings are just never meant to be worked up into paintings. I have sketchbooks full of sketches and color thumbnails that have never made it to fully-realized paintings or other works; they might look great as a little sketch, but once taken beyond that realm, they'll sometimes just fall flat. That's the beauty of art, though. If you never attempt to push things, you never know what's possible or what's best left alone.