I kept going until I had 31 days worth, and I’ve drawn on the two days since, the link takes you to the completed gallery.
So this is a quick picture post as I went protesting on Sunday when I would normally have written a post.
Tuesday I started a painting and worked on the first garden in the VR world that has a working title of ‘et in arcadia ego’
underdrawing
starting tthe painting
Glover Street Yard
On Wednesday I ran and then worked in the garden. I spent the afternoon getting frustrated with the VR – it’s always about adjusting the scale to make the world realistic. (as an aside I bought a copy of MakeVR to try to build quicker but discovered that my kit isn’t upto it, it works so slowly it defeats the object of using it.)
Thursday I carried on painting and modelling.
Under painting
I carried on painting on Friday
Friday painting
On Saturday I worked on the model, changing textures (sourced from old family photographs)
Glover Street Model
The I finished the painting and entered it into a competition locally – online so maybe not just local – I had to submit a photoof me in the studio alongside it.
Looking through Instagram, which I just rejoined, I came across #draweverydayinmay2020 run by ‘Marigold the Maker’ under the auspices of The Big Draw. Part of it is to use the additional hashtag #stillpointsketchingchallenge and place some creative limitations on your daily sketching. I decided to use Autodesk Sketchbook to produce all the drawings on my iPad, work between 9:00 am and 10:00 am each day and remain in my seat at the kitchen table.
Teaching myself to paint
I also bought myself some boards, 5mm ply 25 cm square, to do some small paintings, just to keep my hand in. These lemons were started the same day I drew the two in the dish in the gallery.
I also applied for the Yorkshire Sculpture International Network 2020, which is a set of online meetings fortnightly from June until October where “Each of the participating artists will be invited to contribute to developing the content of the network’s programme and to the research and development for the next Yorkshire Sculpture International festival. This programme will enable us to ensure we are building the future artists’ professional development in the most useful way for artists.” I should find out if I’m successful next week, I can’t imagine there will be many people my age applying.
I’m posting this again to remind myself, the arts group I did this with has done a zoom meeting with all the videos played, I wasn’t invited (or I missed the email?) I know it’s not great but it would have been nice to be asked.
After moving from my studio as detailed in my last post I’ve been unable to write anything. Perhaps incapable is a better word. Obviously the latest Grant application was abandoned and I’m left in a kind of limbo. Fortunately I don’t need the money to live, only to work effectively and make the appropriate investments – time, contacts, equipment, etc., – so I’m one of many who is just happy to be ok and creatively feeling a bit numb.
garden drawing 13/04/20
So I did a drawing, A1 size or thereabouts, in charcoal, pencil and watercolour (a couple of dabs of white). This one took about four hours on one of the fine days we’ve been having.
I’ve also been working on new models for the geranium project, rebuilding them so that they can be played on desktops or through browsers.
I’ve uploaded a fairly straight version to a site called ‘simmer.io’ there is a link on the page for the project. It takes up to two minutes to load and it doesn’t work on Safari, it also doesn’t allow you to look up or down for some reason and has an annoying walk speed and sound.
I’ve been resolving those issue though and hosting new attempts to sort this on my website. Here www.ian-latham.com/geranium/game
This one is just one garden at the moment and has no sound, but it loads quicker and allows you to look up etc., these are both controlled using the mouse to look and arrow keys, or wasd, to move around.
I’ll be updating this location as I try out new things and bring in more gardens.
A final thought. I’ve been reading a lot of ‘art’ stuff,
[…] I want to speak loudly for what art has always been — something done against the rules of advanced capitalism. Art isn’t about professionalism, efficiency, insurance, and safety; it’s about eccentricity, risk, resistance, and adaptation. Mike Egan, owner of the visionary Ramiken Gallery, writes to me, “Art will not survive as some dull thing, some social good that we must support out of consensual responsibility to the social good. Art will explode with the desires of the people to see action play out, with tears, screams, harmonies, and some death.” He goes on, “Watch what happens next. Galleries will go under — unless they survive. How to survive? Passion. Obsession. Desire.” Indeed, in this time of sheltering-in-place, he just moved his gallery to a decrepit building across from a garbage dump and told me he opened “a secret show.” I thought I felt the rumble of art’s old thunder when he wrote this to me. In this and other similar gestures, I imagine a new “First Days of an Art World.”
Jerry Saltz waxing lyrical about the effect of Covid 19 on the “Art World”, April 2nd 2020, notes that a large number of galleries have reserves that will last a month or two at most. In the UK commentators are noting that the closure of the gallery closes the gallery shop which for many is a major income stream. ACE has launched an emergency funding scheme that seeks to mitigate the disaster that has hit a majority of those self describing as artists. Friends of mine are working to maintain connections and bolster the support networks that run alongside practice for a good number of creatives. The thing for me is that a lot of this points up the commodification of ‘art’ and speaks to a constituency that judges artworks according to their social value. The ACE parameters are that you earned more than 50% of your income from funding streams (not necessarily theirs) and can demonstrate this loss of income. It’s either this or hopeless idealism it seems. I’m interested to see what remains after COVID-19, but also extremely nervous.
Draw Every Day in May 2020Looking through Instagram, which I just rejoined, I came across #draweverydayinmay2020 run by ...See photo »
