Today Anna and I went to Carriageworks to see Incognito.
The sheer number of A5ish sized works was overwhelming. I didn’t want to buy anything (of course), but I used it as an opportunity to either pick up new techniques or remind myself of old techniques I forgot I had used (and renew some resolutions to get some things happening).
I’m mid-board book altering right now (Pig the Pug, Spot’s Nursery Book, The Alphabet Book – all to come), so i want to remember these:
- grids always work
- Buttons in a circle look fabulous – can I use my buttons like this? (see red, white, blue ones)
- similarly, a lot of the little “ging gangs” I keep (monopoly houses, and such) and my old jewelry could work as a collage
- Mosaic-like collage (e.g. the 2 x teapots below also the oddly floating turtle and the boat and mountains with the yellow sun rays)
- sometimes the thing that makes it is the background!
- it doesn’t have to be high colour (see the white buttons).
- Raoul Dufy-style portraiture is also valid – (see mummy and billy)
- yoiu don’t have to draw it well, you just have to draw it (coffee cups, and mummy and billy)
- layered paint drawn into paint (the yellow things with the pink sky, which seems to be someone lying on their back and drawing UP into the sky from a courtyard)
- doodles with dots and lines can be beautiful, same with drizzled ink
- cardboard can be a fab background (the girls in the dotty dress on cardboard background)
- it feels like poetry but it isn’t really – the coffee cup
- Use stamps to be a block of colour (woman with the stamp neck)
- collage can be surprising (the woman opening the mouth of the fish with a beer can and a cigarette)
- you don’t need to go anywhere, paint your front door
- high colour can be countered with plain – yelloe background with odd animal from collage
- simple can be great – the simply egg / line drawing
- lay down some blocks with a gelli print, draw into it (the abstract with the red line down the lhs)
- A doodle will suffice if you choose the right colours (pink and gold abstract)
- when in doubt draw a bird in a jacket (and this show was filled with chickens, and seagulls and bulldogs)
- or crop it and put it on a grid.
- i cannot do this, but drawing a ribbon can be amazing (but maybe a gelli print using a ribbon tied in a bow?)
- I’m always seduced by strong autumn colours
- draw with a white pen over a vividly coloured thing and it looks good.
- crazily precarious houses always win
- whne am i going to do a laundry series?
- make a highly coloured background, then put a white mask over it (or start with the mask then gelli print the complexity over the top e.g. the bird on a branch with flowers). Note this was how I felt about this one.
- you cannot go wrong in approximating a map: the blue framed thing that looks something like a Brett Whiteley nude but a map
- Simple is good – the line drawing of a 3 pronged plant with a few circles and a boat
- Compex backgrounds sometimes make everything ok (the chicken, yes, there were HEAPS of chickens)
- when in doubt go overly decorated, but leave white space for the eye (the line drawing of the staircase)
- type and high colour works too
- more autumn colours and a simple set of lines (jug and cup)
- Jigsaw puzzles – you can layer them (and then paint on them, it doesn’t have to keep it’s original colours)
- gelli print and layer the paint and write into the wet paint
- it’s totally ok to highlight some bits of an abstract / multicoloued background (white background with some water colour marks)
- biro and coloured pencil also works (drawing in blue biro of a station / building)
- go revisit Sean Tan’s work – the red background with a vase of barely alive flowers
- do some collage from pre-printed papers (the still life with gold on grey / black / white)
- when in doubt, polka dots (chicken no 2).
- try a set of related images (food), and turn them into a postags stamp
- great colours, and a 3d feel (watercolours in turquoise and caramel, like chocolates from a parisian store)
- Make the collage 3d (the three fish are raised from the page by a tiny plinth)
- it’s always good to musical instruments in a still life
- add beads to a 2d work (the rocks in a pile, with red and gold beads)
- honestly, get around to cooking that gelli plate you have the ingredients for)
- smaller collages pieces – you don’t have to use the whole pattern paper tissue, just a torn off piece
- do a crazy drawing set like my screen saver – (the under sea images)
- what is it with how much i love a good denim blue? and how nicely does it go with yellowed book paper (ashtray “it is what it is”.)
- make some leaves, colour them in. collage them down (the leaf collage).
- add some netting and a bit of stitching to focus a piece
That’s a lot of notes, but here are the images, which i have tried to organise in packs of things that went together (autumn colours, collage mosaics), but it’s really not that easy!!
