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To Preen Oneself"
by Jan Kölling
How to Beat Artist's Block
It’s a devastating thing for an artist to feel they’ve lost their inspiration, to encounter a creative block. But suffering from artist’s block doesn’t mean you’ve lost your artistic ability and it can be overcome. Dr. Janet Montgomery has some tips to help beat artist’s block:
Beating Artist’s Block Tip 1:
Beating Artist’s Block Tip 2:
Beating Artist’s Block Tip 3:
Beating Artist’s Block Tip 4:
Beating Artist’s Block Tip 5:
Beating Artist’s Block Tip 6:
Beating Artist’s Block Tip 7:
Beating Artist’s Block Tip 8:
Beating Artist’s Block Tip 9:
Beating Artist’s Block Tip 10:
Beating Artist’s Block Tip 11:
Beating Artist’s Block Tip 12:
3 Reasons a Creative Block is Hard to Beat (But Not Impossible)
Don't beat yourself up when you find yourself in a creative black hole, know that you can beat it. It may indeed be hard, but it's not impossible. And if someone tells you they've never had a creative block, they're lying. Everyone has them at some stage, it's how long they last that differs.
1. You’re Setting Unrealistic Expectations
2. Your Skills are Rusty
Take the time to do those Painting 101 exercises again, such as the painting of a color triangle and then expand it by painting up one with each of the reds/blues/yellows you’ve got. Familiarize yourself again with the way specific colors mix, with the way individual brush shapes make marks. Fill at least a spread in your sketchbook with technical practice every day.
3. You’ve Forgotten the Joy of Creation
What are your thoughts? How do you overcome a creative block or artistic crisis?
"The Silkworm
"
by Banu Haznedar
Looking At Art
In the role of art critic and judge, one always attempts to be open to new ideas and approaches, to admit that being honest is the only defense for not knowing it all. But, even looking at art, which implies judging, remains a highly personal and creative act in itself. So personal, in fact, that no one should take it personally. With this firmly in mind, I offer these thoughts concerning MOCA’s March 2010 Contest of the Month.
This month’s MOCA contest was particularly interesting to me. It was compact enough for me to imagine that I might be able to write about it without being too tedious and not having to leave too many people off the comment list. And, there are some interesting developments in this work that somehow stirs me. I am writing this essay without looking at the final contest results, but rather I am referring only to my own personal notes.
First of all I was happy to be able to include a piece by Jan Kölling in my “top eight.” Kölling has been submitting interesting work for quite awhile now. And, while I have been attracted to the high contrast and color saturated photos there has always seemed to be something about the overall composition that did not work for me. With this set of three entries from Kölling, I think I can put my finger on this by saying that what I missed was white space. There was little breathing room in those previous pieces. However, these entries are loaded with compositional space, perhaps swinging a bit too far in the opposite direction, but with these I think Jan Kölling has hit upon some new ideas that will bear future fruit. Ironically, I chose “Slice Your Grip” (the one piece among the current entries which has the least white space… go figure) as my favorite Kölling in this exhibit.
Bernd Dreilich is another artist who has recently submitted a lot of work, which I have noticed but did not include high up in the cut. His previous black and white photo collages are very crowded and dense. Of course, lots of small detail works better for a large print than a smaller computer screen, but I have to judge what I see and in the case of a lot of his work I could not see the forest for all the trees in the way. Also, I felt that his technique in handling the photo compositing was still formulating and under development. “Room Without a Clue” solved a lot of these problems for me while retaining the sense of mystery and surrealism that was dripping too heavily from his previous work. By way of comparison, I chose “Room Without a Clue” over “The Painful Truth” because the reel-to-reel tape recorder appears to be just pasted on rather than an actual integrated part of the scene. It is either there or it isn’t. And while the door in “Room Without a Clue” is improbable in its location, its placement and angle works well in the overall composition.
For me, that is what this month’s offerings are about, improvement, maturing and stepping across new thresholds. For example, looking on the MOCA website at the entries from Ernst and Dominique Brunzlik as if they are in chronological order I can imagine a bit of a sibling contest with each pushing the other to try new things. Dominique starts off with some rather standard experiments with “Bird Life” and then really begins to push the pixels around like wet paint. It feels like something clicked on and by the time we get to “Angry Nature” I like to think that the artist has seen some new potential in using the “scatter” and “goo” plug-ins as one would use brushes. A lot of further work and exploration remains to be done, but this seems like a new threshold for this artist.
Ernst Brunzlik’s suite of work begins with a somewhat similar tentative experiment titled “Fairytale” and pursues a different track than Dominique with a colorful assortment of selected and gradient filled amorphous shapes. The progression of compositions in this manner remain, open and striking in color but lack in modulation of values. That is, all the shapes have about the same gray value and therefore all remain on the same visual plain. This saps the energy out of what is, in terms of color, is a very vibrate field. I chose “Meta-level” as the piece from this series that comes closest to recognizing and resolving this problem. Again, a good beginning and certainly, if I were to believe my own fiction of a contest between siblings and a chronological presentation of the results, this is a body of work that bodes well for future exploration and more pushing out beyond preconceptions.
Banu Hazneder also offers what I take to be a glimpse at a series of experiments that ends in new territory. “The Moth” is not really an impressive beginning, but to Banu’s credit the artist picked up on some aspect of that work and singled out a technique that in later work opens the door to lots of potential. Although I have a little problem with the upper right corner of “The Silkworm,” I think this composition holds a lot of the promise I am talking about. The further this work is taken away from the under lying photographs to become something in its own right, the better. Now that you have this Banu, you must look for some ways to destroy it and make it even more personal.
Jay Wilson is another artist that has been submitting work for quite awhile now and I must say that with these two entries “Bird of Paradise” and “Memories” he has made work that I consider to be some of the best seen at MOCA. In terms of coloration, composition, technical execution and mood these works receive my covetous “gee I wish I had painted that” award. In these pieces he is really swinging the pixels, combining techniques and different software and plug-ins with no one thing taking the lead except for the over all art of the work. “Bird of Paradise” reminds me of many of the Modernist works I admire both expressive and abstract with just a little tinge of surrealism. My only comment and suggestion would be to look at adjusting the brightness and contrast just a bit before printing this one up really large. Those saturated and low-key tones in the upper left corner may tend to mush up during the translation from on-screen-light to ink-on-paper.
Wilson’s other piece “Memories” has a very formal quality much like the way I experience Japanese art. The color scheme is masterfully under control and the composition leads us to move out of the frame. Even though the relationship of the elements is more clearly defined in this piece it does not remove one bit of the quiet mystery in this composition and our desire to formulate a story around what we see. Still, I chose the “tour de force” of “Bird of Paradise” as my best of show.
MOCA has always represented, to me, a place that encourages experimentation and discovering what is new about art made digitally. As such, I am always surprised to see photography that does not push much on the boundaries of what we has seen from traditional means of creating photographic images. I enjoy a good photograph as much as the next guy and in that respect David Badgley and Tom Bovo offers us some good photos with their entries. I believe I detect some very subtle photoshoping of these images, but overall I can’t get past the standard tourism feel of these works. I believe Badgley’s “Ma Tsu Temple No.6” shows off he’s artistic eye the best. And, Bovo’s “Soho” is getting close to what I look for in digital photography. If the other figures had been presented more like the figure in the far left side of the image I would have much more to get my teeth into. This is an example of where I think just settling for what the camera saw is not enough. I ask myself why use a computer to do what a pencil, pen or camera for that matter can still do quite effectively. Certainly, working digitally is not about reproducing what other media has done; it is about discovering what could not be done before we had these tools.
MOCA has always represented, to me, a place that encourages experimentation and discovering what is new about art made digitally. As such, I am always surprised to see photography that does not push much on the boundaries of what we has seen from traditional means of creating photographic images. I enjoy a good photograph as much as the next guy and in that respect David Badgley and Tom Bovo offers us some good photos with their entries. I believe I detect some very subtle photoshoping of these images, but overall I can’t get past the standard tourism feel of these works. I believe Badgley’s “Ma Tsu Temple No.6” shows off he’s artistic eye the best. And, Bovo’s “Soho” is getting close to what I look for in digital photography. If the other figures had been presented more like the figure in the far left side of the image I would have much more to get my teeth into. This is an example of where I think just settling for what the camera saw is not enough. I ask myself why use a computer to do what a pencil, pen or camera for that matter can still do quite effectively. Certainly, working digitally is not about reproducing what other media has done; it is about discovering what could not be done before we had these tools.
So, in the end, what makes this collect of entries interesting to me is the ability to see the evidence of artists who are exploring, looking at the results and going further. I see also artists who are focusing and reducing what they do while gaining more control over the composition, moving, as it where, from the kitchen sink approach to more mature awareness of composition. In these entries, I see the growing attempt to push our perceptions of what these tools can do and the sublime results when that happens.
Congratulations to All,
Comment Here...
"Submission"
by Dominique Brunzlik
YOU BE THE JUDGE!
Each judge brings to the contest platform a unique perspective and now it's your turn. The contest is over, but we value what you have to say. Tell us the pieces stand out for you and why.
IN-BOX
Regarding -- Have We Gone To Far? Hurting Animals For Art ["Mary's Page" 3.8.10]
Submitted by
lamb (lamb_bi_nature@yahoo.com) on Sunday, March 7:
How dare he abuse this poor animal and call it art!!!!!!!
I cannot tell you what I would like to do to Vargas and call it art. Sorry that we had to see and hear of such a thing darkening the halls of art. I can only say this man is ill in the brain and just got his rocks off while honduras applauded. Sick! sorry I am to disgusted with this. Do lambs have hackles, cause mine are up!
Sincerely
, PJBanks aka "lamb"
Dear Lamb -- I, too, am disheartened by this artist and those who choose to represent him. It is amazing to me that I did not hear more feedback on this issue from our readers.... Helping Animals.
Thank you for sharing. Mary
This page posted 15 March 2010
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