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| waves and an unidentified bird...any ideas? |
Ok, I think we all know the answer to the title question. The sad fact is that the forming of an extensive and far reaching life plan, whilst in theory a very good idea, can be used as a Work Avoidance Technique. I'm good at them. The best ones are the ones that really feel like you are doing proper work, like internet research.....and life plans.
So, with the assumption that any work is better than none (even if it doesn't fit in with my grand life plan!) I present my newest painting/drawing.
I started this one a little differently than usual, I painted the texture of the sky and the waves with white primer before putting the oil bar on. This is very different for me because it represents actual
proper planning. I knew that I wanted to make an image like this, so I went out for a walk along the beach with my camera, and took the photo. When I got home I printed it, and then........ I abandoned it.
For a reason though, that I will explain later.
Two days later I primed the board. (is the suspense getting to you yet?)
The next day.....oil bar. It's not finished, but I quite like it, it's probably more atmospheric than the photo, and you can't see as much of the texture underneath as I would have liked, but hey it's a learning curve right?
Those of you familiar with my blog will know that I write a bit too, and a story is why I abandoned 'waves and unidentified bird'
Here is the first image...in progress
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| work in progress |
I'll keep you posted about how I get on with it (and the rest....)
The story goes as follows:
The First Authors (working title)
Long ago, in the time before
reading and writing, a day arrived when newly minted words began to fall from
the sky like fresh snow. Each night the world would fall asleep and awake the
next morning to the muffled whisper of the drifting words.
At first the drifts were left
alone to be trodden to pulp and cleared by the street cleaners, but soon the
words began to fall thicker and faster until roads became impassable and people
were unable to leave their homes.
Some people lit fires that burned
24 hours a day. Truckfuls and shovelfuls and handfuls and mouthfuls of words
were burned. Yet still they continued to fall from the sky, gently and
peacefully filling the spaces of the ones that had been removed.
In a little town in the middle of
nowhere, something else was happening. A little boy had noticed that if he
caught some of the words and put them together, they would stick into long
lines and begin to move and make sounds. His father noticed too and together
they set about collecting all the words in their garden and putting them
together in streams and strings and piles.
Some words seemed to go better
with each other than others and soon the boy and his father had cleared their
garden. Their neighbours began to ask for help, their efforts at joining the words
were in vain. So the boy and his father cleared their gardens too.
News soon spread of the father
and sons new talent, and it seemed that they were not the only ones in the town
with the skill to join the words. The town council called upon these people to
help, and soon there were piles and heaps and towers of vibrating strings of
words.
The townspeople thought that
putting the words together would solve their word drift problem. They had not
expected the connected words to make so much noise. Each thread and cord and ribbon of prose sang
and shouted and whispered its’ story, day after day. No one slept.
Once again it was the boy and his
father who came to the rescue. They had begun to make multi-coloured boxes with
hinged lids and heavy clasps to contain the strings of words. When the lids
were shut it was as if the words were sleeping, only to be woken when the boxes
were opened. The town councillors ordered a large building to be constructed to
house all of the boxes. The building was open to all, to put in and take out
the boxes as they pleased.
We know these boxes now as books
but gradually we have lost the ability to hear the language that they speak.
The words have never lost their power; we just have to try a little harder to
hear them.
