playtime .....

Recently I commented on Barry's blog something to the effect that I was not a great fan of the altered image, but I had really loved a few he had posted.  Barry has published a book on these altered images and it is well worth a look at what he does and how well he does it.  Most of you who visit my blog will know his blog well already.

Many years ago I learnt to work with Adobe Photoshop in a course at The Brisbane Institute of Art, a course for artists rather than technical experts. Truth is I was so amazed at all the filters one could use on photographs and artworks.  A myriad of gorgeous images presented themselves and it was very easy to become addicted to image transformation.  I haven't played with it very much though I have Paper Camera on my phone and am tempted to play every now and then.

These images are of some of my drawing a day sketches and though I haven't applied any filters to them, I have played with the dark and middle range levels and these images are what I arrived at .... an improvement on the originals.  They make interesting photographs but there is not a great deal else I will do with them.  Just needed to have a play!

I really should be doing something more important down here in the studio, and I will, but the playtime has been fun.  Thanks for the idea Barry ....  More important, now that I have re read this I realise that there is nothing really more important than our play time in the studio.

a peek at my DaD book for 2006 .....

You can always tell when I am not completing anything in my studio - I revert to showing you peeks of things already done.  That is not to say that I don't have plenty going on in my studio - too much started really and not enough being completed!  Many ideas and some of these, finally, are working their way through to fruition.  Etchings mostly - and I find the who process time consuming and involved.  There is absolutely nothing like the marks we make with etching though - and the gorgeous plate tone, scratch marks on the plate which I love to leave as they tell their own story and the way you can blend your inks, different ways to wipe the plates etc.  Obviously a print lover!

And a book lover ..... In 2006 I decided to bind my year of drawings into monthly volumes.  I only made ten, though I will finish two more for the set.  I have bound them with a series of different bindings and will make a perspex box for them ... a showcase really of stitching techniques which will be helpful when I teach.

As you can see, I actually rusted or manipulated many of my pages before working into them as I found this way less intimidating that facing a blank page every day.  Very often what was on the paper suggested my drawing for the day.  In my former home we lined the road leading to the house with liquidambers.  I was told not to expect too much autumn colour here in tropical Queensland but you should see the magnificent colours each year.  (I now live a couple of hundred metres from this home so each time I drive by, I still get to enjoy the autumn colour.)

One of the techniques I love working with is using white ink on translucent paper over my drawings.  Now I pierce and scratch the transparencies but it is lovely to be able to look back through my DaD books and see when those ideas took root.

I have always really loved this drawing - the manipulation of the paper did much of the work and I only had to draw into it a little to suggest the dandelion.

I am a Andy Goldsworthy fan.  This was inspired by his 'Time' book.  Towards the end of 2010 my partner Steve and I went on a six day Art Refuge walk in Haute Provence, in France  - doing the walk with a guide, looking at various works Andy had installed in the region, actually sleeping (not that we actually did get any sleep on the hard floor) in one of the art refuges and being able to see his installation in both the evening and morning light.  Bliss.  The experience was one of my most favourite travelling experiences.

2006 led up to my divorce and there were plenty of these black hole days!  The nice thing about drawing a day, which is usually a very personal visual diary (until you post it on your blog!) is that you can indulge in these 'poor me' drawings and keep up the pretence on the outside!

This would be another of my favourite drawings because it encapsulates what the DaD project is all about - not meant to be little masterpieces but sketches that reflect your day.  I was obviously cleaning and being spring, bees had flown into the house and died on the window sills.

I use a number of  'symbols' repeatedly in my serious work.  (One day I will have a web site organised and share images from some of this work.)  Vessels and the elongated seed pod shape are two that I use for woman (the vessel) and man (the seed pod).  I have an on going body of work 'The Art of Language' where I have used these shapes in my etchings many times.  They appear in my large drawings too.  I also have a thing for crosses and squares!

I never would have thought I would put anything personal out there on the web - and look at me.  Think I am now just in such a happy part of my life that it no longer matters.

The Studio - brisbane ....

Yesterday I had the chance to slip down to Brisbane and catch up with dear friends Adele and Wim.  It should have been last Friday - we usually go out and celebrate their birthdays in May as they are two weeks apart, but mum ended up in emergency ..... and thus plans change!  We all know about that.

This is Wim de Vos, the man who taught me to be a printmaker way back in 1998 in The Studio , and I still spend time there occasionally for masterclasses.  Adele Outteridge shares this studio space and teaches book arts.  It was Del who started my passion for bookmaking and artist's books.  Quite a change from the drawing and painting that had previously been my focus.

Wim has just come back from months travelling overseas and with a mind and heart full of incredible experiences and visual memories and he is now bringing some of those into a creative reality in the form of books. The one seen here is a tunnel book of the Ghetto in Venice.  I took a number of photos but decided that when Wim is ready, he will be showing off his marvellous book and I did not want to preempt that unveiling.  Suffice to say, it is quite brilliant, as his work is - please take time out to see some of their work in The Studio link provided above.

This colourful array is the beginning of another book of Wim's to do with the Red Light District in Amsterdam.  Can't wait to see it finished.  Once he is exhibiting these works I am sure he will be happy for me to photograph and post the images.

In previous posts I have talked about the DaD project initiated by Adele in 1998 - and I am pretty sure that as a comparison to my poor attempts to draw each day of the year since then, I mentioned Wim and 

Del and their dedication to the project.  Here is a photo of the bookcase holding the many, many volumes of Wim's drawing a day journals. Oh, I am so envious of his discipline.  His journals are not only a reflection of what is happening in his life each day, but a reflection on what is happening currently in the world of politics and shenanigans in public life.  He often draws from things that are happening globally or locally for his daily drawings.  Many of the bits and pieces in front of his drawings were brought back from his last trip.

Now I could have taken hundreds of photos of Adele and here beautiful books, but would not do so without her being present, or without her permission.  She was off during the day doing a book binding week at the State Library with Keith Smith and Scott McCarney who are out here from America.  I did ask her for permission to use a few photos I took of 'stuff' in the studio.  These books are just some of the 'stuff' piled into cubicles - certainly not Del's masterpieces which are beautifully displayed and housed around The Studio.  Not mine to show you though .... maybe one day.  You will have a glimpse of her talent looking at their website.

And this is for Jennifer who reads my blog whenever I post and is usually the very first to comment - this is their  'stuff' wall.  Wim and Del are masters of 'stuff' and ever since I have known them, have been collecting and filling perspex boxes (which Wim makes) and creating this wall between their personal space and the teaching area.  Each box would make a photo in its own right - full of the comical and the whimsical, the interesting and the memory collections.  Talk about lust and envy.

Just everywhere in The Studio is something to look at ......... and enjoy.

And here, up on the shelf, is one of my books that Wim bought from one of my Open Studio Days.  The black and white book on the left, in its perspex box.  The book is titled 'Road Trip' and as I had shamefully not done so before its sale, I took the opportunity to photograph it yesterday while in The Studio.  I will write about it at a later date.

 Well, some days lately have been sad or stressed, but yesterday was a day full of colour, fun and friendship.  We dined last night on a Japanese Banquet which was delicious and then though I drove back up to Montville (an hour and a half north of Brisbane) - it felt as if I rolled!

dAd - drawing a day visual diaries

It is a beautiful thing - a visual diary.  Someone's record of their day, infused with meaning that often only they understand.  I began my first in 1998 through a project coordinated by Adele Outerridge from The Studio in Brisbane which she shares with Wim de Vos.  There were eight of us, Australia wide, this first year.  Artists who committed to doing a drawing a day - not a work of art, but a visual record of what we did that day, what we felt or saw.  Maybe a suggestion of what we had been working on in our studios that day - a smear of paint, a torn up etching, an embossing ... one of my drawings was done with chocolate and wine after a lovely dinner party which left me with no desire to draw!

1998 dAd book - susan bowers

1998 dAd book and 2006 dAd bound in 12 monthly books

complex coptic binding using tabs

first foray into mark making 

I love using transparent overlays

rusting pages helped with drawing into them

my first embossing

transparent paper and ink

dabbling with monoprints

sketchings

The dAd Project is now world wide and hundreds are involved.  Adele still coordinates and she and Wim have continued to draw each day.  My discipline has been sadly lacking - it sounds so easy but it is quite a difficult thing to maintain.  In the first year we all found it very difficult initially, then addictive and absorbing.  I have begun and stopped almost every year since 1998, some years only one or two pages have been done.  I do not mind - those pages that were done are a lovely reminder of what I did, or what I thought about that day.  This year I began again, stopped some time in February and decided that this blog would take place of the drawing a day.

The blogging experience is turning out to be  like my daily drawing - difficult, now a little addictive and hopefully soon, absorbing.  Not so much so that I do not move forward with my art practice, but as an addition to it in maintaining a certain discipline, and using it as a record of my creative processes.

from scribble to book .....

On and off since 1998, and very much more off than on, I have been part of the DaD project inspired by Adele Outerridge.  Drawing a Day.  Sounds easy but unless you are incredibly disciplined it is quite difficult to maintain.  In 1998 from February when I joined the project, I drew daily and then bound these drawings into a visual diary.  In fact one day I will blog on this book.  The drawings ranged from the inspired to the jovial depending on what was happening on that day - I had one 'drawing' where the page was smeared with chocolate and red wine.  Hardly a drawing in the real sense but certainly a lovely reminder of that evening shared with friends.

I speak of this because very often from those drawings, explorations often developed and from those explorations very often a series of artwork developed.  We all 'play' with our jottings and scribbles and in their own right, these are a significant reminder of our creative processes.  Out of those scribbles it is rather satisfying to see a work of art emerge, or several in the same vein.

scribbles from DaD 

scribbles from DaD

more scribbles

Playing with 'writing drawings' is something I have played with for years and this series of drawings from my DaD diary in 2010 turned into an artist's book which was exhibited and sold.  I actually added to the book post sale by making separate perspex covers into which the paper covers slipped.  The perspex was engraved with some of my writing scribbles and the contrast against the black paper was lovely.  The perspex covers gave the book a more rigid frame which enabled it to stand up in open display more effectively.

Artist's book by Susan Bowers