quadraptych (?)

[devi]

I have a day off today. It's glorious. So:





This is what I've been up to the last couple of weeks. I've been wanting to paint something for ages, but could never settle on what. Then one night I sat down with one of a set of four canvases (cheap from The Works. If they'd been expensive canvases I'd never have picked up the brush) and told myself I was just experimenting with using paint and mixing colours. I deliberately didn't have a goal in mind, I just gave the brush its head and waited to see what happened, and the whole thing was such fun that I went on and did three more.

On the downside, my laptop now has tiny speckles of black paint on it due to overenthusiastic brush-flicking. I feel like Brian from Spaced. "I paint... fear! Aggression! Pain!"

Capital One spammed me today. "You could have this [spectacularly awful] credit card in your wallet! Look, we know you're an idiot - you must be if you're considering applying - so to choose which design you want, all you have to do is peel off one of these little credit-card-shaped stickers and stick it on the application form! You can have a piggy, a monkey, a puppy, a tigger or an England flag!" I threw the rest in the bin but kept the stickers. I might send them out with the next Wasted Epiphanies as an Ironic Comment on the Debt Culture, innit.

Comments

[secondhand-rick.livejournal.com]

Top left FTW!

But only just over top right.

[dyddgu.livejournal.com]

Choice of weapons?

[holzfallen.livejournal.com]

Oh hey, me too. I picked up a few basic books from the library and am starting to go through the exercises. Are you following a boook, or just practicing sketching, or?

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

Silver knives :)

[jinty]

My cake is cake-with-lemon, not lemon cake (lemon drizzle is lovely but a bit strong for many slices, I find meself personally as an individual).

Mmm.

Cake.

[[drool]]

[ladymoonray.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to use a combination of learning from books, and practice. Although I never seem to get a chance to actually do the practice unless I'm on holiday :(

One of the books is this one (http://www.amazon.co.uk/New-Drawing-Right-Side-Brain/dp/0007116454/ref=sr_1_10/026-0141425-9893277), which I bought in the Tate Modern shop and rather like. You have to equip yourself with various bits and pieces at the beginning (I still haven't cracked the clear perspex on the list), but it's quite helpful. It starts out with doing a self-portrait in a mirror as an assessment exercise (and so you can look back later and see how bad you were to begin with). Mine was so bad I burned it!

I can't remember the other one book I'm using - it's a little less intimidating, but possibly less useful as a result!

I don't think I'd have the courage to sketch old men in pubs. Go you!

[jinty]

Top left for me too I think. I'd love to see these in real life.

[ladymoonray.livejournal.com]

I'm using a couple of books, including this one (http://www.amazon.co.uk/New-Drawing-Right-Side-Brain/dp/0007116454/ref=sr_1_10/026-0141425-9893277). And I do try to practice, but it's hard to find the time. Because I want to do it, but I want to do it less than I want to get my OU degree, and, well, all the usual excuses!

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

The purple one and the brown one sort of do that if you position them right. It'd be cool if they all did.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Hmm, yes, I can see that.

Maybe it's more two pairs of paintings than a quadraptych...

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

(If you actually possess a silver knife, I may have to rethink my Sneaky Plan...)

[dyddgu.livejournal.com]

Depends on what you mean by Silver, of course...!

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

She's new to me, thanks for that link! Interesting.

I think I agree with taimatsu about the more uniform colour thickness making the top two more appealing... although that seems a kind of shallow basis for appeal, it does work on me.

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

Turn the Collected Works into a bladed weapon and you're on :)

[juliet]

*Fab*. Top right, just over top left, for me :-)

[dyddgu.livejournal.com]

So long as it's pointed, rather than edged...

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

Right. You're on :)

[billionhighways]

i love 'em. would look terrific in a modern loft!

e

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

On the downside, my laptop now has tiny speckles of black paint on it due to overenthusiastic brush-flicking.

This is not a downside. Painty bits on everything you own is the height of authentic art-chick/art-dude coolness !

PS. Nice art. You have a good sense of colour.

[verlaine.livejournal.com]

I vote for bottom left, apparently the cat that walks alone once more. (Top left is extremely accomplished though.)

I'm about to move into a huge (by London standards) apartment for which I have absolutely no furniture. So I'm considering laying newspaper down in half the living room and buying myself an easel. Working in a company with lots of cute talented graphic artists = quite inspiring!

[verlaine.livejournal.com]

Oh, and tetraptych, at least in theory :)

[verlaine.livejournal.com]

But then again, there's got to be some mileage in the phrase "quadraptych equations", somewhere.

Damn it, I wish my thoughts would ever marshal themselves in an orderly fashion, instead of turning up piecemeal over the course of the day...;

[mollydot.livejournal.com]

I love them all. My favourite is changing from second to second though. Actually, I can't seem to get it down to one for very long at all. Sometimes it's the bottom two, sometimes it's the right two. I prefer the colours in the bottom two, the shapes in the top two. But the colour isn't as strong in the top left as in the others, so it never makes it into the favourite, though I do like it a lot. And you'd think that being in both my favourite pairs would make the blue and green one my favourite, but when I try to concentrate on that one, my eye gets drawn to the top by the shapes of the brown one, or to the left by the colour of the red one.
OTOH, I think if I was to have one on my walls, I'd go for one of the top two. The more complex shapes give you something to look at for a long time.
Hmm... interesting. I've just looked at the bigger graphic in your gallery, and my eye is being drawn more to the top two.
Ah, I don't have to pick favourite. As I said at the beginning, I love them all!

I tried the experimenting with mixing colours once, but it didn't come out half as good as yours. I did another one too, that I don't appear to have scanned in. It was much more insipid.

[ex-humanfema327.livejournal.com]

oo theyre really nice! i like the top two best i think. they're all very yonic!

[boxofwires.livejournal.com]

Stickers no less! It's amazing what these companies will do to make you feel like something important is happening.

Remember the "Yes" and "No" envelopes that came with Readers Digest offers?

Some of them would have a piece of card covered with indecipherable colourblocks, which when you put in the special envelope (with in-built colour filter), the word "WIN" would magically appear!

I used to love them. I'd carry it around with me, putting the card in the envelope, taking it out again, like Eeyore with his pot-and-balloon birthday present.