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