Tag Archives: Twitter

Creativity Crash

June 26, 2015 Ade 6 Comments

Kennack sands acrylic painting — Kennack Sands 10″ by 8″ acrylic

Well, that’s it then, I’ve definitely had a big creativity crash. I find it difficult to understand how I can go on holiday to the Lizard peninsular in Cornwall with great weather, drop-dead gorgeous coastline, and so much to inspire and enthuse and come back with virtually nothing; just a couple of ill-judged watercolour sketches and a forced plein air beachscape.

I wrote about how much I was looking forward to this holiday in my last post, and I’d packed loads of plein air gear and panels along with high hopes of knocking out a painting or six. The reality is, once I was there, I simply couldn’t get enthused. I tried to force myself, thinking that simply pitching in would break the deadlock, but no. Don’t get me wrong, the holiday itself was a very welcome break away from everything, and yes I did enjoy the time with my wife Carole, all the walking, the wildlife and in particular the long periods of staring aimlessly out to sea on my evening walks. I got quite good at that.

Alice Hole and Ade Turner — Great to meet talented painter Alice Hole

There was one special highlight too: meeting talented Helston based artist Alice Hole. I’ve known Alice as a digital friend on Twitter for quite some time, and it was so nice to actually meet up over a real life coffee. You can visit Alice’s Facebook page here. Besides reinforcing my long held desire to move to Cornwall, Alice also encouraged me to start actively using my dormant Facebook account. She told me that as a professional artist she finds Facebook a very useful tool, and more effective than Twitter for encouraging sales.

Although I’m very familiar with Twitter, this was new territory for me. So, over one rainy day in our cottage I did my research and went live. You can see, and ‘Like’, my ‘Ade Turner: Artist’ page here. I have to say, Facebook really isn’t as intuitive as it could be, and there are many areas of confusion and potential for privacy slips.

For me, the main difficulty was getting my head around the relationship and differences between my personal account, and my artist ‘Page’. Naturally I would like to encourage people to ‘Follow’ my page, but you can only add a ‘Follow’ button onto your personal page.

Now, my personal timeline is filling up with the usual banter between friends, which will be of little interest to anyone looking for my artwork. So I thought, not unreasonably, I’d start a new Facebook account specifically for Ade the artist. Nope, can’t do that. Apparently it’s a big Facebook no-no, and they will challenge and close multiple accounts held by one person. That is so dumb.

The ‘business me’ is a very different entity to the ‘private me’ with distinct needs and expectations. Why shouldn’t I be able to separate and manage both while retaining useful Facebook functions across both? As long as I can prove I’m a genuine individual responsible for the content of each account, where’s the problem? I can run as many Twitter accounts as I like. Facebook really needs to sort this, as it sounds like it’s a common gripe on forums.

While I’m talking of online things, I succumbed to a spot of art-based retail therapy while I was away and bought this Guerrilla Thumbox2 pochade from Dick Blick art supplies. There’s nothing like the anticipation of new kit to cheer me up, and I’d had my eye on one of these for a while.

The American art market seems spoiled for choice when it comes to plein air gear, and their service was brilliant. We ordered on a Sunday, had an email to confirm the shipping cost was OK on the Thursday and it arrived on the following Monday morning. Just over a week from order to delivery. I’ve had longer waits from some UK suppliers!

Guerrilla packaging — Pristine in packaging

It arrived well packed, and the quality is what you’d expect of a mass produced item. The finish is a little rough here and there, and I’ve a few little gripes like the palette extension doesn’t sit flat at 90 degrees as described and the nuts holding the tripod plate are a little intrusive in the box cavity, but these really are minor things and I love it.

Of course, now it’s arrived, I can’t summon up the enthusiasm to get out and use it…

You know, I’m pretty sure this creativity crash is all part of my grieving. It’s only just been over a couple of months since my dad died. Odd thing is, if you ask me how I’m coping I’ll probably say OK. In truth, deep down, all is not as well as it would seem on the surface. There’s an underlying numbness and disassociation which I just can’t shake. Some days even getting out of bed is a struggle.

And now here I am, back home, trying to reignite the spark. These pages may be painting free for a while, please bear with me.

Acrylics, Paintings

Ben’s Portrait after ninety minutes

November 8, 2014 Ade Leave a comment

For all my apprehension at creating a portrait of one of my colleagues, Ben, in a series of short, live and public sittings I have to say I’m really enjoying myself.

Frankly there was always much which might have conspired to derail the process. Not least I expected my decision to try and paint at my workplace to raise a few quizzical eyebrows. From the point of view of our facilities management team mine must have counted as one of the oddest requests they’ve received. And I’d no idea what my managers and colleagues might think…

I have to say that so far my efforts have been met with nothing but interest, and I’ve had some very lovely comments from all quarters. So far, so good. Everyone has been so gracious and accepting of this lunatic who brought his paints and easel to work. Far from being off putting, I’ve found the attention has been very encouraging, spurring me on to give of my best.

Even switching rapidly from my ‘work’ head to my ‘painting’ head hasn’t been as problematic as I thought it might. The shortness of time available to me during breaks is forcing me to make rapid decisions and I’m making sure that every minute available for painting counts.

Ben-underpainting — Under-painting complete in 40 mins

Our first session was about 40 minutes of painting time (I’m not including any prep and clean up time). I wanted to complete a tonal under-painting as quickly as possible so over an initial red chalk drawing I used a 1″ brush and Burnt Umber darkened with Mars Black or lightened with Titanium White. Ben sat against a neutral coloured blind with a very strong, sunlit, backlight shining through.

Ben-background-under-painting — Background under-painting

The second session was completed in 20 minutes without Ben present. I wanted to establish the under-painting for the background. I chose to work this in a pale violet to act as a compliment for what is likely to be a cool yellow ochre final colour.

First colour on Bens portrait — Broad colour applied

Then, darkness… On the third session the clouds and rain rolled in, and the wonderful light we once had was sucked into a growing grey grimness. With a yellowy artificial light coming from many directions, I relied on both observation and memory to inform where I should lay the first colour blocks. I’ve mostly used Liquitex Heavy Body acrylics supplemented with a few Winsor and Newton Artists acrylics. For speed I worked with colour straight from the tube without any added medium other than a wee spot of plain water to increase fluidity.

I particularly relish the cool mixes arising from the cobalt blue and yellow ochre. Lighter tints were made by adding a combination of Mixing White and Titanium White. Titanium White on its own can be very harsh, I like the softer effect of adding Mixing White. A single half inch flat brush was used throughout.

While progress on this session was rapid, about 25 to 30 minutes, I can already see I’m actively avoiding three areas: the eyes, mouth and nose. Got to get a grip on these next time while also working more broadly across the rest of the painting. More sessions are planned for next week when I’ll try and bring the weaker areas up to scratch. Watch this space.

Acrylics, Hulk and Spider-man, Paintings, Sculpture

All primed for Twitter’s #PortraitNovember

October 31, 2014 Ade Leave a comment

First of all ‘Thanks’ to everyone who visited ‘Closer to the Art’ last Saturday in Stone, Staffordshire and came up to say ‘Hi’. So many lovely people and a great atmosphere, with four of my fourteen paintings finding new homes with a positive option on a fifth. I’ll be honest, I thought my lowest priced paintings would have been the first to go; shows what I know doesn’t it?

Oddly, even for such a modest show, I found fitting the preparation in between work and home unexpectedly tiring; I’ve been a positively bleary eyed this week – and a little listless too. So, now that ‘Closer to the Art’ is out of the way, I think a change of pace is in order.

I’ve decided I’m going to do two things. In the evenings I’m going to set about my Hulk vs Spider-man sculpture again. Bit of a long running fan-boy project this which seems to emerge when the nights get darker (its been safely tucked up in a cosy box over the summer). I find this sort of sculpt proceeds very slowly, so don’t expect any major new reveals immediately. More over the coming weeks.

During the daylight hours, when I’ve got more chance of actually being awake, I’m going to take part in the #PortraitNovember Twitter challenge. For this I’m going to build on the work I did during #DrawingAugust where I produced pen portraits of my work colleagues every day for the whole month.

One of my colleagues (pictured) has very kindly (foolishly?) offered to sit for me throughout #PortraitNovember. This time I want to use acrylics, and work larger than my original sketches. I’m hoping to paint during break times at work, and my employer has kindly given permission for me to set up easel and paints in our offices for the month. Guess I know who’ll be providing the lunchtime entertainment over the next few weeks…

My intention is to make only a quick preparatory sketch, then get straight into making a single painting. In reality I’m only going to be able to spare a couple of hours a week at most.

I’m not at all sure how well this is going to go. During #DrawingAugust the thing I found most challenging was snapping out of my analytical ‘work’ mind-set and straight into a creative state of mind. Some days were very obviously better than others! Combine that with the fact that portraiture in general is so far out of my comfort zone, this could prove interesting. Watch this space.

Musings, Sketches

Drawing August drawing closer

July 27, 2014 Ade Leave a comment

Difficult to believe it’s been a year since I really started to get into the whole social media lark. Well, Twitter anyway. And one of the first things that got me really involved in the virtual artistic community was ‘Drawing August’.

This was an idea conceived in a Twitter chat between printer Jean Stevens and illustrator Dean Lewis. The idea was simple, for participants to make one drawing every day for the month of August. And it really took off.

For me it forced me to draw everyday, a great challenge. Last year I drew whatever happened to be easiest and to hand – my cats came in for some attention. But this year I have ‘a plan’.

By fair means and foul I’ve cajoled about ten of my work mates into posing for me during lunchtime on every work day (I hope). My idea is to produce a timed 15 min pen portrait of each of them for Drawing August. They’ll end up with a portrait, and I’ll no doubt end up with ulcers. My figure drawing could do with some improvement so this should really help me while scaring my colleagues with the results (methinks: I could lose friends here…)

While I won’t have enough people for every day of the challenge, it will add a new twist and focus. Wish me luck!

Sketches

So that was Skymarch

March 29, 2014 Ade Leave a comment

Skymarch has been the latest of the monthly Twitter tagged ‘challenges’ which I’ve found so very helpful in driving my motivation since August last year. Now, with March coming to an end I’d like to gather together the items I’ve submitted for #skymarch.

All the challenges are informal, accepting submissions as and when. Many artists have committed to post new material each day, but despite my best intentions for me this isn’t always practical. For one thing I seem to be falling asleep in the chair most evenings. What can I say? I need my beauty sleep. It takes a lot of effort to stay looking this good… *coughs*

With this practice I think my handling of acrylics is improving; the characteristics of the medium are starting to sink in. I’ve deliberately tried to restrict myself to a few minutes for each sketch. Many have only taken around 15 minutes.

I did submit a couple of finished paintings: Chun Quoit (from around ten years ago) and Charmouth from the west. OK, I know, using an old painting is cheating I guess, but I know you’ll never tell… All the rest are sketches, and here they are: