John Lacey » Amateur

Permission To Want - Spoil Your Inner-Artist This Christmas!

John Lacey — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 10:26:23 +0000

Sometimes it can be hard giving yourself permission to want things, giving yourself permission to pursue those things for no better reason than you ‘want’ to.

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[I am starting to realise I have a terrible perfectionistic streak. If I can't make something perfectly (an activity that seems by its definition impossible) then I feel a great sense of anxiety. I'm trying to be less obsessive. I'm trying to convince myself that a quick sketch is better than no sketch - that an imperfect podcast is better no podcast at all, that an awkward tentative step is better than never learning to walk.]

Do you struggle with this too? (I know I do.) Let me know in the comments.

Also Christmas is coming up… this is the perfect opportunity to spoil your inner artist and inner child. I know I will be!

Frustrations Boil Over

John Lacey — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 13:25:10 +0000

I could tell you about the poem I wrote over the weekend. I could tell you about the coloured charcoal pencils I bought. I could even mention the erm ‘unique’ performance I gave for the benefit of YouTube. [Actually I probably wouldn't have posted it without the musings on voice and the comment Cindy left about Tom Waites.] But, actually, right now my mind is elsewhere…

Right now I’m just feeling frustrated and incompetent. I found myself referring to myself as an ‘amateur visual artist’ and then realised I was an amateur at pretty much everything I do. I’m not sure my skills have value. I’m not sure how much I can really develop them. I suspect the desire to express myself creatively might be another in a long series of pipedreams. [As an aside I can't hear the word 'pipedream' without imaging Super Mario Brothers.]

Life is hard at the moment, hard and confusing. While I am making an effort to paint and draw, I’m being constantly reminded by real world forces that it isn’t a priority. Infact I’m sure many see it as a pointless frivolity. It is hard to make the case for it, actually. Not even making a case for art so much as justifying the time, energy and other resources I devote to doing it. I think sometimes it would be easier to justify if I had some natural ability for it, that the merits of doing it would somehow be more obvious if I was a prodigy of some kind. But I’m not. I’m a beginning artist, a clumsy, hopeless, floundering wannabe.

Anyway it’s late and I’m tired and emotional. I’m hoping I can find a way to make things work and in the meanwhile I guess I just have to accept frustration as a part of life and as fodder for the creation of art. I feel like I haven’t been blogging enough lately and while I’d like to make assurances that this will change the truth is everything is so up in the air that it would be foolish to do so. (The wheels kind of fell off the ‘vlog everyday in July’ bandwagon too.)

Mixed Media: Head Turned

John Lacey — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 06:08:48 +0000

Following my recent experiments with pen sketches, comes this image. It is a combination of pen and paper and digital tweaking with a graphics tablet. A very simple image but one I enjoyed creating.

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Pen Sketches

John Lacey — Sun, 30 May 2010 22:00:17 +0000

It was something I had all but forgotten until quite recently, but back in high school art classes I was introduced to an artist (whose name sadly now escapes me) who worked exclusively in pen. His attitude was that you had to be completely fearless when sketching with pens because you don’t get the same opportunities to erase things as you might working with pencils. At the time this really impressed me and got me thinking about how one might convey detail with a single colour and in a medium that doesn’t allow much pressure sensitivity. It also introduced me to cross-hatching. The whole exercise was a great grounding for later experiments with lino cutting and printing.

So with this high school memory firmly planted in my head I went to OfficeWorks and bought some fine line pens.

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Pen Sketch: Austin

Pen Sketch: Boy With Headphones

Pen Sketch: Boy In Baseball Cap

Painting: Abstract (Tetris)

John Lacey — Wed, 19 May 2010 13:28:46 +0000

I joke that this is my ‘tetris’ painting, but really I was just playing with shapes, grids, colours and washes.

A Creative Catalyst

John Lacey — Wed, 19 May 2010 13:10:07 +0000

I’ve talked previously about how I wanted to paint but didn’t. Something I was perhaps less forthcoming about was that I had told a person, a very specific person, about my desire to paint. Infact painting was one small part of a much larger, more grandiose fantasy I had been concocting in my head. I was going to move to a new city, I was going to work during the day and study art at night and I was going to date that particular person.

Strangely it wasn’t this scenic imagining that got me started so much as when it became apparent that fantastical bubble had burst around me. I was in a hotel room in a city where I knew next to no one and was being essentially ignored by the person I traveled to see. A dear friend of mine accompanied me around the city when he could, but he was in the throes of his own significantly more successful romance and I didn’t want to tread on their toes. I watched a lot of tv in my hotel room. I spent a lot of time in food courts, particularly enchanted with one place that boasted home made chocolates. And I bought a sketchbook and some water colour pencils and a paintbrush. That sketchbook turned out to be one of the best investments I had made in some time. I filled it’s pages with childish drawings and trite poetry – my hopes, my fears, my sadness.

Something triggered me earlier tonight, it made me think of that person and that notebook. I probably won’t share it’s contents with anyone but there were times when it felt like my only friend in the world.

Maybe it would’ve been nice to disappear into the sunset with that particular person. But it didn’t happen and when it didn’t I started drawing in my new sketch book in the hotel room… to alleviate the boredom, to process the rejection, to foster some sense of things. It was an unhappy time but a powerful catalyst. Perhaps ultimately this will prove more worthwhile.

Painting: Self-Portrait (Eyes Closed)

John Lacey — Mon, 10 May 2010 10:23:16 +0000

Acrylic painting on 8×10″ canvas board.

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Feeling rather disillusioned today. This painting caper isn’t working out as I might’ve imagined – even with all the advice that it’s okay to suck and that realisation I’ll be stuck in ‘the gap’ for a really really long time. Wondering increasingly if my time might not be better spent in some other way. Today I’ve been preoccupied with painting experiments that have left me with less than inspiring results. I kind of feel like this is the way to go, to dabble, to experiment, test the parameters of things. But right now I’m tired and disappointed. Hopefully tomorrow will bring other things.

Painting: Blake

John Lacey — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 11:16:45 +0000

It’s 9pm Monday night here as I type. And if I’m being honest I’m only posting a painting because I promised myself I would.

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This is a painting of Blake (the same Blake who appears in this sketch). Although this isn’t a great likeness and a number of liabilities were taken, I like the bright colours and the combination of colours. I like the different colours in the skin tones.

Painting: Single Tulip

John Lacey — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 23:00:20 +0000

This was probably much more an exercise in creating interesting backgrounds than painting a flower. Indeed the flower was an afterthought.

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This was actually one of the earliest paintings I did. I was painting with the acrylic paint undiluted, with quite dry brushes and creating brushstrokes in interesting patterns. (Well, patterns that seemed interesting to me at least.) If you look closely you’ll see where paint has been smudged and even scratched off. A spare cloth proved just as handy for this purpose as a paintbrush.

I can’t quite remember for sure but I think this might have been the first time I used my palette knife with an image.

A Confession…

John Lacey — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 06:40:23 +0000

If you read this blog on a regular basis you’ll probably appreciate that this was recorded some time ago (and that I didn’t publish my first sketch ‘yesterday’ but about three weeks ago). Even though the whole point of sharing the artwork was really about being an amateur and documenting skill and technique that will (hopefully) grow slowly over time, it was still a very nerve racking experience.

I’m sure there’s something to be said for containment, about not sharing your work too early or too indiscriminately – especially for beginning artists or ‘recovering’ artists. But I think too that being open to feedback and criticism is a creative muscle and the only way you develop that muscle is by putting yourself in situations where you can receive feedback.

When I reflect on my YouTube experience (as JohnOfJordan), it wasn’t that my videos became perfect over time so much as that negative feedback just didn’t phase me as much. I had experienced it before and lived through it. I could read a comment and decide if the feedback was valid or if it wasn’t, if it was about my work or if it was about the person leaving the comment. Though I won’t lie to you either, that first time I sang a song on YouTube and received a one word comment – ‘disgusting’ – I deleted the video and it was a long time before I shared anything musical on that website again. And that is always the temptation, to take your work and bury it, to never let that song be heard by anyone or to let that novel rot in the bottom drawer. On paper it kind of makes sense too, you don’t want to feel like that again so the easiest thing is to not create and not to share. But really what you need to do is take a few more of those hits so they don’t hurt as much, and what you need to do is go back to creating.

This is a message we all need to be reminded of at times. I’ve seen submission deadlines come and go and while I could’ve sent something – often times I’ve even created something specifically for this purpose – I haven’t, just because I didn’t want to be judged.

John Lacey » Amateur

Permission To Want - Spoil Your Inner-Artist This Christmas!

Related Posts:

Frustrations Boil Over

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Mixed Media: Head Turned

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Pen Sketches

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Painting: Abstract (Tetris)

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A Creative Catalyst

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Painting: Self-Portrait (Eyes Closed)

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Painting: Blake

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Painting: Single Tulip

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A Confession…

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