valences: December 2007

I've finally found the paper that I've been looking for. It is called Permadur .010. It is just like the paper in the hardcover Moleskines. I have been wanting to make some pencil drawings that exist out of the books for a while now. Much of the time, I wind up liking the pencil versions of the drawings more than the gouache or pastel versions. They are my initial impressions and tend to have more energy, more of the quality I'm looking for. The following are some poor quality images of the first drawings that I've done on this paper. I'm getting ready to start a large one possibly.

My process of working on my installations has evolved yet again... I have begun to implement my strategy of working on the wall pieces in the same manner that I work on the drawings, but it hasn't gone quite as I've envisioned it. I'm not working as fast as I want yet and because of a lack of time (due to a 50 hr work week) some interesting things have developed as far as my process goes. My original idea was to bust out a wall piece in a one to two days, document it, and move on. Having to work for an hour here, two hours there, and a half hour here and there has forced me to adapt and change my strategy a bit. The original plan was meant to force me to work from my instincts. As I've been slowed down, and had to sit on pieces for days, having pauses in between working on them, I've seen that maybe concentrated and focused pushes of working might not work as well for this strategy. I've had to make a move, then walk away from the piece and come back later, make a move, and walk away again. Because of this, I avoided making a bad decision on my new installation (below) that I would have made had I just worked straight through without pause. I tend to do this with drawings too now, which is working good. So, I'll have a number of pieces going and I'll float between them, taking breaks to do other things as well, having a fluid way of working. Keeps me on my toes more, keeps me fresh and more "ballsy" to make hard decisions.

Above is the "great hall" piece and the image I'm working from. Originally I was going to make the edges fade more gradually from dark to light brown, but because I had a pause of 5 days or so in between sessions of working on the painted part, I realized that it is better the first way that I painted it. It's good to live with it a bit in between moves, as long as I don't let it sit for too long.

The image below is sideways for some reason. I can't fix it. This is an example of my sitting on a piece because I didn't know what to do. I painted the purple part in a fit of frustration. I just wanted to do something to it. I like what I did. The first thing that I did was the dark blue part. I kind of liked it just that way. I might try an alternate version of this piece as just the dark blue part.