This week we will continue exploring different ways of depicting the familiar. It's all in the service of learning new ways that may not come naturally to us. Why do you think we persist in thinking of reality in such a narrow way, I wonder? Is it because we are comfortable making figures beige with brown hair? Is it because we can't conceive of a purple cow with yellow spots? I don't think so. I think we be come a bit complacent when we get into a formula that has worked before. Art making can be a risky business....what if we look silly? What if no one else likes it? What if mine is boring compared to some one else's? One of the ways we can overcome our fears, is to look at other successful pieces in other media and see that a wider visual vocabulary definitely engages our interest and makes us want to look further. I know this is beginning to sound like a mantra, but centuries of art schools and academies can't be all wrong on this, given the time honoured assignments of copying those who went before.
Now there's that dreaded word COPYING and we had a brush with it in our first week. I prefer the word assimilate to describe the process that happens when we interpret some one else's work and make it our own. Especially as we are using a medium that is still in its infancy as a fine art genre. Exciting really that so many of the possibilities have yet to be explored. This week's lesson also may nudge us into a less generic way of dealing with natural objects. We can banish the elliptical leaf once we discover leaf -making through out the world! So have fun this week and remember ...DON'T FUSS. Just do whatever takes your fancy.
