The madcap laughs

I decided I must prevaricate a bit less and must pick up a pen/brush etc today. So I started with a drawing of my daughter's new horse, Gump.. She was happy with it, and it caused my wife to repeat her entreaties for me to try and earn my living doing horse portraits. *sigh*

Gump

Then I picked up a watercolour pad and did some ink painting. A landscape (Pic Saint Loup Again), and then a thing which is called "A woman's love of her horse" and finally an abstract thing (I can see a camel wearing a baseball cap backwards through a window). Well these are all ok I guess.

Pic and Hortus

A woman and her love for a horse

camel hat

But during all this I was (as usual) listening to music. Suddenly Syd Barrett came on and for some reason this made me pick up my iPad. I'm much happier with these.

Terrapin

Wolf Pack

Abstract - what can you see?

Sometimes when you look at an abstract expressionist painting you can see things there that probably aren't intended to be there. It's like looking at clouds and picking out shapes. Different people see different things: minds want to identify things in shapes that mean something. I always remember the Peanuts cartoon where Lucy, Charlie Brown and Linus are lying on their backs looking at clouds: 

Lucy: Aren’t the clouds beautiful? They look like big balls of cotton. I could just lie here all day and watch them drift by. If you use your imagination, you can see lots of things in the cloud’s formations. What do you think you see, Linus?
Linus: Well, those clouds up there look to me look like the map of the British Honduras on the Caribbean. That cloud up there looks a little like the profile of Thomas Eakins, the famous painter and sculptor. And that group of clouds over theregives me the impression of the Stoning of Stephen. I can see the Apostle Paul standing there to one side.
Lucy: Uh huh. That’s very good. What do you see in the clouds, Charlie Brown? 

Charlie Brown: Well… I was going to say I saw a duckie and a horsie, but I changed my mind.

You could say that they are both right - a person sees what they see. Or you could say that they are both wrong - they are both looking at clouds, nothing more, nothing less. How do artists feel about this? Some artists seem to mind if you look at their pictures and see things that "aren't there", especially if it isn't what the artist intended. After all if your abstract piece was intended as a polemic against the international domination by the christian right, or a statement of how your sexuality tends to define you I can imagine it could be a bit annoying if someone says they see "a duckie and a horsie". On the other hand abstract expressionist painting often comes from "within" - and artists are often surprised by what ends up on the canvas themselves. Which is why a number of attempts by critics to explain abstract art often sound a lot like Linus, and people looking at abstract art feel intimidated. After all they don't see all that pretentious "intellectual" crap, they see the "duckie and the horse".

Anyway, here's another iPad picture - what do you see?

In other news my website www.davidabse.com has been updated - now with up to date pictures, front page slideshow and prices and sizes of all works listed. Take a look

Got my iPad back

Got my iPad back. Oh yeah, and my step-daughter! I am happy to be back drawing on my iPad - who needs a studio? (Me actually). So here's what I was up to today, art-electronically speaking. And one iPhone drawing, which il;lustrates the difference.

Bunny and Gull

Civil Servant

Herd of Bloons

Flock of Gallumphs

iPhone Snake

Sketching at Ganges Market

I love ganges Market. We first lived in Ganges 5 years ago when we came to France, and Fridays ever since we have visited Ganges whenever we can. It is a busy market all year round, aiming mainly to serve the local - or at least regional - population. Ganges is great - it sits at the foothills of the Cévennes, still in the Hérault put literally a stone's throw from the Gard. It's a working town, not a tourist town, and its Mayor doesn't see retaining its beauty as a priority - which is a shame - rather to have social housing with ugly electric shutters rather than tasteful wooden ones. The fact that these are supplied by a company owned by the mayor I am sure is a coincidence.

The market is huge and spreads across town. You can buy everything there - all kinds of food, including live food - chickens, rabbits, fish - loads of fruit at this time of year (gorgeous peaches, cheese, meat, bread - but also clothes, leather goods, plastic stuff, hats, shoes - you name it. Our normal plan is to get a seat at the café du marché (which serves the best coffee) and Kitty goes off to get fruit while I sit and sketch. Here's some i did today:

Two small quick ones

In between tearing apart the gallery, and unloading furniture onto people who have seen my ads in the "bon coin" (who knew how popular that sink was going to be?) after a visit to (one of my) doctor I decided to get some painting in. So here's two small quick ones:

Cut the crap: 41x27cm

October 11 (35x50cm)

Unbelievably hot in the atelier - 37ºc outside, god knows what inside - but more, that's certain. But there's nothing like a bit of abstract expressionism painting to music to gee you up. Although they're a bit morbid.

iPhone drawings

my daughter took my iPad on holiday with her so I have been unable to draw on it (my arms aren't long enough). Instead I've been having a go at drawing on the iPhone. I've shown one of these already - the red bull in the previous post: but here are some more.

Dog, woman

These are a couple more Chagall-esque type drawings. I think Chagall would have loved digital drawing. Dufy too. There's something about it that lends to that kind of style.

Cat flowers woman

cat

man

café

Thought I'd try some modern "plain air" digital drawing - so a café scene and a landscape:

Pic St Loup

Red Bull

Grey Man

Doggy

Man

Mad dog

And a couple more crazy animals. Am enjoying these.

Mad cat

Fat Wabbit

On the whole, the iPad is so much more interesting: the iPhone is too limiting because of its size - there's just less you can do in such a small space. Oh I am sure there are some people who can manage detailed miniatures, but I find it hard drawing with a stubby stylus on a 3x5cm screen. I'll keep going though. Until my iPad returns in a week or two.

Modern Technology

Here's an amusing story: There's a french website that I upload my work onto called "L'Atellier des Artistes" . They are linked to Canson - a company that makes paper, but also they are linked to various competitions and expos. One in particular is "Art Nîmes" which is an art fair that takes place in the City of Nîmes - about an hour and a half from here. Mainly it's galleries exhibiting, but "L'Atellier des Artistes" hire a space and a person to act as adjudicator and choose pictures from entries on their website. So getting your stuff on the wall there is pretty good - it costs nothing, gets your artwork seen by galleries and visitors to the fair, and there are prizes awarded. Last year I tried to enter but failed. I asked be email why my work was rejected, but I never got a reply.

This year the theme is "Animalia", and so I thought I'd enter some of my animal drawings. However, they got rejected (pretty quickly). The rejection email said they didn't meet the requirements of the competition. I was a bit confused by this (they seemed to be asking for animal drawings, and that's exactly what they were) so I emailed a question saying that I didn't understand - and that perhaps this was because of the language barrier - I'm obviously a stupid Brit. I got a nice reply (in English) that explained to me that what they were looking for was work a bit more "modern" , and that straightforward drawings of animals would be rejected. In fact she emailed me to a link I'd missed (and it seems i wasn't the only rejected person confused) with a detailed explanation of how they didn't want traditional animal drawings, nor did they want cliché'd drawings of people showing their "animal" nature, but something altogether more modern and interpretive of the theme. Anyway, she gave me another chance to enter (not normally given), which was very kind of her.  Given this kindness I thought I ought to enter something, so I reflected and looked at my work, and decided the work I had done that most closely fitted their requirements were my iPad drawings of weird creatures, and so I submitted three.

And here's where it gets amusing. (Phew that was a long wait). They accepted all three of my works....BUT... they STILL didn't meet the requirements of the competition, because they were "digital". Er.. too modern? But they were likely to be accepted properly if I could reproduce them as original artworks on paper (not iPad drawings printed, which i offered - not within the rules) and resubmit them. Which I've done: and here they are:

Wedding Goat - after Chagall

Red Bull

Tiger

Doing this translation of digital work to work on paper was an interesting exercise, so I didn't really mind - and I now assume (silly boy) that these will now meet all requirements and go off to be viewed at the expo. Which is good news. This also is a good example of how bureaucracy invades all parts of life in France. For example, today I received my official attestation for 2012 from the Ministry of Work and Social Affairs that I am an artist. Yay!

I love it.


Post script: here are the rejected digital drawings (since I've been asked). The rejected animal drawings are visible on my website amongst all the other animal drawings http://www.davidabse.com/portfolio/animals/ :

iPad Chagall - Wedding Goat

iPad Tiger

iPhone Red Bull