In the eye of the beholder …

Painting, or more specifically, what constitutes a ‘good painting’ is something that has no doubt been contested since the dawn of time when man first began daubing paint on cave walls.  You can almost discern, through the mists of time, the first critic carefully contemplating some abstract image of a hunting party bringing down a mammoth, I  wonder how long he paused before delivering his verdict with the business end of his wooden club … and creative types think the critics now can be harsh!!

Jolene and I spent the day yesterday wandering around the Kelvingrove Art Galleries and Museum, a long day with kids in tow but well worth it for the fantastic range of arts and crafts from across time from Egyptian artefacts, to Scottish pre-history through to reflections on modern society.  The Art Galleries have an extremely fine selection of paintings, not least of all one of Jolene’s favourites, Salvador Dali’s Christ of St John on the Cross, and my own personal favourite, Van Gogh’s, A Portrait of Alexander Reid, pictured below:

Jolene and I actually decided to buy a small framed reproduction of this painting from the museum shop, although we weren’t necessarily so keen to be hanging Jolene’s favourite Dali anywhere in the house!

Coming back from the galleries, and having enjoyed a quiet dinner down at the pub, we came home well fed and well motivated, if for no other reason than it can be difficult to wander around any gallery now without looking at some of the exhibits and wondering just how some of the items can be considered to be art, let alone of high enough calibre to be hung in a prestigious gallery.  Faced with paintings that you feel your three year old could produce given half the chance it’s difficult not to think, I could do that!

So we did!

Jolene started it when she began slapping red paint onto a canvas (7″ x 9.5″), and to be honest I thought that that would be that, I had already named it ‘red paint on canvas’ … a masterpiece to behold and clearly befitting of any up market gallery.  Alas there was no stopping her and she carried on initially by gluing on a foreground and then over-painting this with some actual subject matter, by this point she had already made some of the ‘modern art’ I’ve seen elsewhere look amateurish and so it was she ended up with the picture above.

Meanwhile, I wasn’t about to be outdone by Jolene and had made a grab for my own canvas (12″ x 12″) – typically for me it already had some unfinished rubbish on it – following Jolene’s lead though it wasn’t long until I too had daubed over the canvas with red, indeed I had already named this one too, ‘even more red paint on canvas’ … genius, eh?!

I was kind of perturbed when I saw that Jolene wasn’t going to be content with slapping some paint on the canvas and that I might actually have to put some thought in to what I was doing, I ruminated a some ideas many of which I had to discard as they were too involved, beyond my ability to execute or clearly plagiarised from somewhere else and instead I ended up with this (below).

It’s funny though how ones attitudes change to art as you get older, there was a time when I couldn’t understand how someone might stand and look at a painting for any more than a moment, yet when you actually see some of the true masterpieces in person there is so much to see beyond the bigger picture that it can be difficult not to look at them with a more discerning and focused eye, you don’t need to like everything you see, but you should be able to decide what you like and why.

Just from a general interest point-of-view I thought I would just upload a couple of the other paintings we have hanging around the house.

We were gifted the painting above by Jolene’s mother and father who brought it back from a trip of a lifetime to Nepal.  The one below was picked up during our Holiday last year in Wester Ross from a lady who ran a small shop out of a shed selling soap, her son was the artist and he had produced a few of these paintings featuring a central Celtic Knot design.

Characters from Dickens Novels – Digital Downloads

I’ve spent a large part of the day scanning and enhancing some cigarette cards that we have and after much to-ing and fro-ing between Picnik and Photoshop I’ve managed to remove most of the signs of age from this set of Dickens Characters.

These cigarette cards were collected, we presume, by Alasdair’s Grandma in 1912 when they were first included in packets of John Player cigarettes.  I have to say I’m very attached to the cards and I’m sure the originals will have a special place in our home just as soon as we have a completed wall to put them on…long, long story that sadly doesn’t ever seem to get much shorter.  Anyway, I digress, the images are now neatly sorted into PNG files and a PDF and are available for purchase from our shop.

Also, just so you don’t think I’ve been completely overcome by capitalist urges…here’s a bit of a freebie.  The image below will be available to download for free until the end of May.  To get the file just right click and choose ’save picture as…’ and if you want the whole set, including some of our favourite characters from Oliver Twist, they are only $1.99 in the shop.

some unrelated updates

Firstly, there are now felt brooches in the shop.  Each one of these is entirely handsewn by me and available for a bargain price.

I made my first Inchies this week too and am excited by the results.  The first set is for the A, B, C, D, E, F Inchie swap on ATCsforall and the second set is for the Beginners Inchie Swap on SwapBot.

Both are painted with black acrylic paint before being embellished.  The first set used dictionary pages handcut into letters that were then coloured with crayons and outlined with gold pen.  The second set used the packing tape transfer method again with various backgrounds (vintage book page, painted baby wipe, painting with kids poster paints, newspaper).

vintage fashion atcs

I’ve decided to start swapping again.  The first of the swaps I tackled this week was to create two Vintage Fashion ATCs.  Here’s my interpretation and a bit of a how to.

I love this effect and it’s really quick and easy to acheive.

First find an old dressmaking pattern that you are done with or don’t mind never using again.  For my purposes I have a huge box of vintage patterns for size 10 clothing…even with the best will in the world I’ll never fit into these so they’re perfect for other crafts.  The background I used actually has two patterns stuck to it as the one I had with words on it didn’t look old enough for the effect I was trying to acheive.

Using a glue stick, stick the pattern pieces to a plain postcard.  Wait for these to dry before the next part, otherwise they will tear and the whole thing will be a mess.

The figures were applied using the packing tape transfer method shown in the video below.  Pay particular attention to removing all of the white bits, unlike me who did this in a poorly lit room and missed bits!

I photocopied the pattern packaging and coloured in the figures with crayon and coloured pencil before sticking it to my “packing tape”.  The green one is crayon and the red one is coloured pencil.  Crayon gives a more vibrant finish, although I prefer the washed out appearance from the coloured pencil.  I guess anything would work as long as it’s waterproof.

The cool thing about this method of transfer is that ech time I’ve done it, the packing tape (or sticky backed plastic in my case) stays sticky even though it’s been wet, which is perfect for finishing the ATCs.  I just smoothed it on and rubbed my scissor handles over it to get a really good contact between the transfer and the patterned postcard.

The back is finished with another plain postcard for neatness.

what to do with all those vintage buttons?

Over the years I have amassed quite a collection of vintage buttons.  This morning I set out to sort my buttons, after all what else is there to do on a wet and windy Sunday afternoon?  The following pictures show the results of a day of hard labour with the button tins.

first I organised them by colour

then I took some pictures

then I sewed some onto a piece of fleece and put it in a frame

and Alasdair took some arty pictures.

I have literally thousands of vintage buttons.  They’ll either be made into arrangements like this or sold as sets once they’re sorted and cleaned.

book review: Bent, Bound and Stitched: Collage, Cards and Jewelry with a Twist (paperback) by Giuseppina Cirincione

Bent, Bound and Stitched: Collage, Cards and Jewelry with a Twist by Giuseppina Cirincione I have to tell you, I fell in love with this book even before I opened it. The front cover reached out to me with it’s vintage quality that told me the contents was to be worth the wait to get home before I could open it. If you can’t wait, clicking on any of the links here will take you to Amazon where you can look inside this wonderful book. I wasn’t at all disappointed. Even if all you want to do is drool over pictures then this book still won’t disappoint. The author has turned her creations into very appealing and easy to follow projects that teach the basics of the techniques she uses. I have already spent many a happy hour thumbing through the pages and I have only owned the book for three days. Amongst the many projects in the book, the author shows how to turn a single piece of metal wire into beautiful artwork and then use that art to embellish a multitude of projects. She also demonstrates how to effectively use sewing to enhance papers that you probably have lying around anyway and how to turn found objects into stunning, individual pieces of jewellery, presenting the perfect way for me to use some of my button stash. Without a doubt, my favourite project is the last one showing a simple technique for etching images onto copper and then using the etched copper to create a book using wire and rivets, not forgetting an opportunity to recycle any leather you happen to have in your home. There are plenty of step-by-step photos in this book and coupled with the easy to follow instructions I would say you’re guaranteed success. The book goes way beyond the projects contained therein though; the techniques you learn will serve you well for your own creations and your imagination will be well fired once you’ve explored the content for even a few minutes. The author has also written Collage Lost and Found: Creating Unique Projects with Vintage Ephemera. It’s not to my taste simply because I don’t do ephemera; however still well worth a look if you enjoy mixed media collage.