Wet Paint

U1

2008-01-17T22:08:00.000Z

Lisa

2006-11-16T00:42:00.000Z

A Woman is talking about a product. Mr Norman cannot hear the words, but he recognises the intonation of the sell. And maybe this is what it comes down to, not content but form = an olympians sleek body, a well-known actress's voice, a jingle, a striking use of colour, a fade, a jump-cut, a swish pan, sound effects, a nice ass, innovative text-image placement. Not Walt, buy this. But, Just buy, buy buy and we'll all win.
Bear v Shark, Chris Bachelder 2002

Re:

2006-10-11T00:26:00.000Z

It's taken time, but now Wet Paint is back and I'm blobbing away like a madman! If you look back to the first post to see the development over time it could be quite interesting. Maybe not as good to look at as those videos where people take pictures of themselves over a few years (i do think I should have done this with the painting to chart its progress) but never mind. The way I'm working has also changed a small amount in the fact that it's a lot quicker than I intended. Rather than just doing 2 blobs a day, I'm blobbing every line which more than anything costs a lot in paint. If I'd have done it at the original pace, it wouldn't be finished if I lived to 100.

White Noise

2006-06-20T13:47:00.000Z

So blobblog has begun to look like a piece of internet (non)history with no updates other than a new design! So I thought, seeing as I'm unable to get to the painting at the moment (being in Japan) I'd use the blog to write art stuff - things that I find inspiring or influencing or interesting things that I have read.
So I'm starting with a small section from the book I'm reading at the moment - White Noise by Don DeLillo. I hear it's being made into a film by the guy who made classics such as Men In Black 2 so I can't wait to see it! I first heard of the book last year when I was writing an essay on a documentary about air hijackings called Dial History, which often quoted the book.

"It's like we've been flung back in time," he said. "Here we are in the Stone Age, knowing all these great things after centuries of progress but what can we do to make life easier for the Stone Agers? Can we make a refrigerator? Can we even explain how it works? What is electricity? What is light? We experience these things every day of our lives but what good does it do if we find ourselves hurled back in time and we can't even tell people the basic principles much less actually make something that would actually improve conditions. Name one thing you could make. Could you make a simple would match that you could strike on a rock to make a flame? We think we're so great and modern. Moon landings, artificial hearts. But what if you were hurled into a time warp and came face to face with the ancient greeks. The Greeks invented trigonometry. They did autopsies and dissections. What could you tell an ancient Greek that he couldn't say, 'Big deal.' Could you tell him about the atom? Atom is a Greek word. The Greeks knew that the major events in the universe can't be seen by the eye of man. It's waves, it's rays, it's particles."
"We're doing all right."
(Page 147 of the Picador 2002 edition, ISBN 0 330 29108 4)

It's maybe not the best book I've ever read although I haven't finished it yet so my opinion could change but it's definately interesting and often funny, so if your thinking what to read next, maybe try this?

Weaver

2006-01-21T19:20:00.000Z

Words of wisdom: ANDY GOLDSWORTHY (Time, Page 21)
"The rain and frost shadows are more successful; they talk about human presence without the intrusion of a personality. It is important for me that I lie in the rain and stand in the cold - I take the memory, but the imprint left expresses a concern about the broader human condition"

Monkey

2005-12-19T01:40:00.000Z

(on a trapeze)

Unicorn

2005-11-13T14:58:00.000Z

Yes, no paint has been added, but the frame is now a lot stronger. I made a canvas, cut around the paint that I've already painted and have been stitching that on to the new canvas. Another bad thing about buying a works canvas is the biggest one costs £20ish while to make a better or bigger one (like the one I've made) cost about half that.

SOS

2005-11-06T16:25:00.000Z

As you may be able to see, I haven't really changed anything since the last post other than removing the frame. I'm currently in the process of re-framing it (note: don't by canvas' from The Works, you can make a bigger and better one yourself, for cheaper!) and once that's done, I'll began the painting again, possibly at a slightly faster pace, to catch up on what was missed.

Yawn

2005-10-09T23:51:00.000Z

Lake

2005-09-25T19:07:00.000Z

I haven't post for 2 weeks, and I didn't 'paint' for half of that as I was moving to my new house in Nottingham but once I got organised, I restarted. There isn't much difference in the amount of paint on the canvas, partly for the reason above, but also because I'm slowly building outwards now. Every day when I finish painting, I have a look and think of some new way to paint it or see it looking a lot differently, but I think this is a good thing. By doing it so slowly it gives me the opportunity to develop the ideas in my head that you might normally have developed before starting the painting. I like this idea, because there can't really be any mistakes in what I do on the painting, and if something doesn't look right, I can just cover it. I read recently that artists like Damien Hirst work in that way, but I don't know whether that's true or not, maybe some of his work has been.

Sloth

2005-09-11T23:48:00.000Z

In The Times on Wednesday there was a column by Grayson Perry, the Turner prize winner 2 years ago, about how the increasing speed of culture is getting in the way of creating good art. He says "we are prone to being sucked into the idea that fast is somehow central to modernity. To be relevant is to be broadband-quick and dressed for next season. Apparently artists also need to become museum-supply companies with a high turnover of works if they want to succeed internationally." He's decided to start the 'Slow Art Movement' to counter this rise in speed, something that seems very relevant with this piece! Read more about it here.
I started this project in effect when I bought this canvas from the works over a year ago now, and I started painting it about 2 months ago. I recently decided buying a canvas from the works, while being cheap, is not clever, and so am currently hatching a plan to get around this and improving the painting - how exciting!

Madonna

2005-09-04T21:28:00.000Z

The center part seems to resember an icecream cone, or a microphone. It might still look like a birdman too, but perhaps a heavily pregnant one, in which case it would have to be a birdwoman. Either way, it's a bit silly as there is no such such as either a birdman or a birdwoman, although there are birds, men, women, manbirds and woman birds and men and women who dress up as birds for a living or possibly just for halloween.

Birdman

2005-08-28T02:09:00.000Z

As you may be able to tell, I haven't got as far as I was hoping to get since last time I blogged! Ah well! To the person that commented in the last post... I did say in the first post 'It's gonna be a slow process' and if I carried on at the pace that I started at, I'd probably have only done a third of it! Also, if you look at the image in the first post, you may find that I've done more than you think. My wallet certainly thinks I've done a lot! I never imagined how much paint could cost and I don't even want to think about how much it's gonna have cost me when it finishes!
I was thinking about what type of style it's going to turn out as when finished, and right now I can see Futurist and Impressionist influence in it, and I can see these still being quite dominant when completed, in 28 years time.

Scream

2005-08-21T20:55:00.000Z

I think the next post will show some sort of major change, though obviously, it will just be a continuation of this one and the ones before.

Surfer

2005-08-13T14:42:00.000Z

I've had some more ideas now about where I want to go next with this but I think that I should try and begin getting a layer completed more than anything... some parts will probably be at least 20-30 layers thick too but I should leave that until some sides are completed.

Acrobat

2005-08-04T14:41:00.000Z

It feels like nothing is changing. I wouldn't be surprised if I'm still working on this in 20 years time!

Uncle Sam answers your questions, and more!

2005-07-29T00:04:00.000Z

Hello, and thankyou for all the comments. In answer to the comments the canvas is fairly big as you can see from todays picture (about 1x1.25Metres). Ideally I would've loved to do a bigger one, but I'll see how this turns out first! In answer to posting comments with an identity, it shouldn't be too hard - unless your a member of blogger, click other and type your name!

Transporting the canvas has been challenging at times

As you should be able to tell from this picture there's been a little bit of progress since the first post. Some of the lines have got longer, while in the center of the canvas a second layer is also beginning. I think ideally I'd love to work on a canvas about 6 times the size of this, in a sort of 'widescreen' format. I haven't really done any painting at all for some years (since A level now) and it's often said that painting is a format which is going nowhere. I used to think the same, that everything has already been done in painting so why would I want to paint, but on placing the first mark on the canvas I changed my mind!

Right now to me, it's an ugly mess but that's how it should be at this stage I would've thought. I'm just going from the image in my head. I've been working at it for about 3 weeks now, everyday a few more splodges, but this weekend I'll be taking a 3 day break as I won't be here to do it. It feels wrong that I should stop for even a few days, I keep thinking it may be best to take it with me where I go and work on it wherever I am, but for all the hassle, I can't really be arsed.

First post!

2005-07-26T23:37:00.000Z

This is the first post of my new blog, a photoblog of sorts, showing how my painting comes along. It's gonna be a slow process - it's a rather large canvas and I like the idea of it taking shape slowly... This first picture that I'm showing you is what it looked like earlier today. I've had the canvas for over a year and started it about 3 weeks ago. I'd been unsure what to do until I had a sudden brainwave and placed a dot on the canvas. I'll explain more about the style, reasonings and so on throughout the rest of the blog, just so you all don't get bored, and may mix it with other things, for example art critique! Anyway, I may post about once or twice a week on this so keep coming back to see how it progresses! If you have any suggestions, advice or just want to tell me it looks crap, feel free to leave a comment!

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