The Sapient Pig

Joy of joys... Gocco printing with Carmen last Friday in preparation for the upcoming Out of the Blue Arts Market (details posted soon)!

This morning has been about...

The joy of a trip to the Swedish bakery with a found fiver

Tempered by walking through mud on the way back across the park

Redeemed by finding a cute table abandoned by the side of the road and taking it home!

Yesterday for the second time in the space of a few weeks I arrived at the Printmakers Workshop having made my way across town laden with A2 sketchbook and a bag heavy with art materials before realising it was a Monday (they are shut on Mondays). The fact that I've done this twice now would be extremely galling were it not for the fact that the walk back home this second time actually resulted in me having a bit of a breakthrough in the project I had gone there to work on.

Which led me to a realisation about my habits as an artist. I often get blocks of weeks where I can't get anything done on a project and usually put it down to lazyness or distraction; but the one thing that always brings me back to it is a flash of inspiration that changes something about the work. So I've now come to the conclusion that the blockage is actually brought on by knowing deep down that what I was planning on doing was wrong and that's why I can't just get on with it no matter how much I want to get it done. This tallies with what could be seen as a lack of experimentation in my work, because I tend to do a lot of my experimenting in my head.

Anyway, by the time I got home I was finally able to start working on some of the backgrounds for the screenprints. Way back in goodness knows when last year I decided to give up on the idea of the background layers having images in them, as time consuming searches had not resulted in anything I was happy using that could be consistent in style throughout the series. I made a choice, in the interest of getting the project done and dusted, to have single colour flat backgrounds, and this was where the blockage started to set in. It really wasn't the right choice as it meant the images didn't tell enough of the stories and to me it seemed there was very little about them that was really that artistic. After working through a few new ideas about how to do things in my head on the way home I believe (please let it be true) that I have found a way of doing them that I'm happy with. This first one is just an example of the general theme I'm working to now with the background layers; they won't all consist of only words.

Work in progress, creating acetates for screenprinting, image © Sharon Whyte 2008

Tonight I'm off to a private view at the Scottish Gallery for Archie Forrest, Adrian Hope and Norma Starszakowna. It's my plan to go to more of these things, since I tend to miss them more often than not, and to then blog about them.

In general I keep trying to remember to blog about more of the arts events I go to but my memory is pretty ropey these days and so usually I just have to talk about things that have happened that day. On a day like today that wouldn't be very much. I went swimming (don't think that counts as a culture unless you take the view that I was checking out some of Edinburgh's splendid Victorian public bath architecture, which of course you could).

So in the absence of anything interesting to blog about, here's a silly drawing.


'Windowseat' - Pen & ink & gouache - © Sharon Whyte 2008

After a brilliant weekend that included seeing one of my favourite bands Tegan & Sara in Glasgow and a little jaunt around Loch Lomond where I had fantastic fish and chips in a little place called the Real Food Cafe where you sit at bar stools with big chunky wooden tables (just the right balance of down to earthness and good values such as only using fish from sustainable sources) I'm raring to go on all of my projects this week.

Madeleine has suggested that I turn the recent quick pen and ink drawings I've been doing into postcards and I'm thinking I might just do that. I think greetings cards perhaps, so I need to find somewhere that can print them nicely and then I need to dig out my Writer's and Artist's Yearbook and read that chapter on self publishing and distributing cards. These are the kinds of things I want there to just be a complete set of instructions for. I'm rubbish at stuff like this.

'Well, wouldn't you be sad?' - Pen & ink - © Sharon Whyte 2008

I've been finding lots of things to inspire me recently. I picked up another copy of the brilliant magazine 'Little White Lies' on Saturday that has pretty much sealed the deal for me over whether to get a subscription to it or not. The current issue focuses on filmmakers in Iran and what they have to say about it is really interesting. I love the way they take one film each month and then explore all sorts of issues that surround that film for the first half of the issue and then move onto the rest of the reviews for the second half. I don't think I've ever read a film review magazine cover to cover before.

Amongst the myriad of other things that have been inspiring me lately is...

- Stationery (well nothing new there) - it seems to me that the designs and the quality on offer just keeps getting better and better. I bought this sheet of wrapping paper to frame and put up on the wall.

Wrapping paper from Paperchase

- and photographs taken by friends that have featured on Flickr this week...

Originally uploaded by Dave Sinclair - © Dave Sinclair 2008

This post is going to be dedicated to those people in the world who look at a piece of art, whatever form it might take, and are able to see the work that went into it, whether that be a little or a lot, and whether they like what they see or not. They can see this because they have bothered to take the time to think about it. They might not be an artist themselves but they have learned to appreciate the process, and they know that no matter how simple the outward appearance, that the artist did indeed go through a process, or many, to get to the point of producing that piece of art. They are not the people who walk into an art gallery and scoff because their six year old niece could make the same marks on a page (I won't even go into how idiotic this kind of comment is because I might burst a blood vessel).

The dedication is for no particular reason other than that I was talking about how people judge the value of art over lunch today, during a discussion about an article I'm going to be writing for an art journal. And no, I am not going to rant in the article, I am going to be pushing the positive angles. But yes, I should find an outlet for the odd rant - anyone want to start an artist's anonymous rant blog?

I sent off a very important letter today. It might result in nothing, or worse still the kind of embarrassment I spend my life hiding under the duvet in mortal fear of, but there is just a chance that it could open up an opportunity that would mean me having to finally face my fantasy me and fight her for ownership of  those talents she claims she possesses. She better not have been faking it.

'I have the tools but not the time' © Sharon Whyte 2008

I suppose I'm getting things done today. Slowly I'm ticking things off the list I made this morning but it doesn't feel like a productive day. There are some nice opportunities coming up though and since my record with good opportunities mostly involves me passing them by, I'm keen to keep plodding through the list as everything on it is in preparation for me not making that mistake again.

These opportunities range from writing articles for journals to exhibiting my artwork in theatres to getting some amazing material for the book I'm researching (non-fiction) to possibly having a say in some exhibition programming for a venue. There are others too, of the self made kind. All of them may come to nothing, but I'm not going to let that thought get in the way as it so often does, to the point where I decide it's a foregone conclusion and don't bother.  I have talked myself out of so many good ideas I would happily undergo some kind of re-programming at this stage to have the habit knocked out of me.

On a tangential note, a recent visit to Tate Britain yielded this rather interesting image in postcard form for my studio.

The Cholmondeley Ladies c.1600-10 Tate

So it's taken me quite a while to notice (approximately two years in fact) that I can highlight words in my posts using different sizes, colours and boldness of font. This is alarming me slightly, I am not generally that unobservant. Anyway, the worry now is that as with all new things I discover and like I will go completely over the top using it.

Things I have been enjoying recently...

1. Pen and ink line drawings - are giving me a new lease of life at the moment.

2. Photoshop - has finally succumbed to my bleeting cries of frustration and allowed me into its inner sanctum by revealing the occasional bit of functionality to me via some kind of strange osmosis. At least this is the only way I have of explaining why I have finally and suddenly worked out how to use the damn thing. I have now decided it may actually be quite a good way of doing things after all and would prefer not to be mocked for my long standing luddidity on this point please.

3. Memory doodles - are something that my amazing friend and brilliant artist Clare Tottem and I started doing when I was down in Oxford visiting her over New Year. After a visit to the Ashmolean Museum we thought a good way of remembering some of the things we had seen that we liked would be to do silly little drawings of  them when we got home. I'm liking this idea so much now that I want to do it for everything.

Things I have not been enjoying recently...

1. Screenprinting - has me a bit stumped at the moment and I'm realising that spending the best part of a year preparing for a big screenprinting project without actually spending any of that time trying out techniques on smaller projects was a bit of a large error. Refresher course here I come.

2. The cold - is determined to hang around a good bit longer it seems and it makes me want to cry and sit in a hot bath all day.

3. Money - or lack of it, is not condusive to a good night's sleep.

'Is this the real me' - line drawing  © Sharon Whyte 2008

clear the way

I've had a bit of a clearout. I decided that I had to get rid of my post archive and start my blog again from scratch, well I got as far as deleting all of the posts and changing the look of things a bit but actually reinventing the blog as something that seems new and different is kind of difficult in the limited famework I have at my disposal.

I have added a couple of new bits though for now, a section on magazines I've been reading, because I've found some really exciting ones recently that I wanted to share and I'll keep updating this. And this little storefront widgety thing which I've already had trouble configuring and am currently annoyed with because it doesn't seem to let you view a larger version of the product image... grrrr! So not sure how long that one will last, which is a shame because I really like the idea of it.

This winter has made me very sleepy and very lazy. I've found it extremely hard to get motivated and to really get much work done. The projects I was working on last year are still unfinished, in fact they could potentially go on for months, even years if I don't watch out. Diversions are many and varied, and prove to me that when I need to I can work quickly and often with better results.

I'm feeling generally like I need to make changes in my working life. It's possible that by the end of this year I might find myself without a studio, so I really need to make the most of it while I can. I also need to get back into looking for opportunities to exhibit, sell etc., which is something I've all but ignored over the past few months. I've got some big questions to ask myself, and decisions to make. It all feels a bit much, which is why I'm continually fighting the temptation to do nothing, sleep, sit staring into space.

I don't think I have an appropriate picture to accompany this post. So instead here is a larger version of that product image in the pesky storefront.

arts market

Here's where I'll be next weekend peddling my wares...