I cant believe it's 3 months since I blogged, and what have I achieved in this time? when i sit down and look at the work I've done I see a massive growth in my ability to deal with commissions. I have to question the way in which I interpret these commissions, but one of them is quite tight on what they specify. Although this is challenging it can be very restrictive when your trying to visualize something from some Else's imagination. Which in my case has lead to me spending hours and hours working on pieces just to be told I've got it something wrong. Then its back to the drawing board !!
February the family go to Antigua loaded with my art gear, and managed to do almost no painting, took 1700 photos instead. While I was there I came up with a plan to paint the people and living accommodation of the island, with a view to having a solo exhibition the following year. Haven't started yet - got home armed with a to do list that would require me to hand my notice in for one of my jobs so that I can concentrate more on the commissions and get some time for the exhibition work. But hows this -the week we come home the phones ringing and I've picked up another commission, yet another from the world of fantasy! Love these kinds of things. 12 of them to be exact. With the other long term commission still running and all the titles for it needing painting I've had to work flat out to create 12 little people with wings and with only a month to do them in. It was my fault that it was only a month- i had some stupid idea that I could just knock them up from imagination and that would be that. FOOL!! When I'd started drawing them, some appeared on the paper quite naturally but the majority of them required some development, the characters hadn't really come out in them in the first few sketches and more time was needed to get them come to life. Thank god I didn't have to do them in oil I'd never got them dry in time, as it was I didn't complete all of them on time and need an extension.
Add to that I have agreed to demonstrate at a craft fair on the 9th of April, so I need to work like stink to make enough work to take with me to sell and decide on a topic to paint while there. Check out http://www.thecreativefair.com/ come have a look, lots of demonstrators and stalls full of wares. Perhaps I should stick with the fantasy art as i don't own a lot of my art of that genre. Thanks for reading! feel free to comment on any of the content.
