This is the space for our members to discuss and share their creative projects, ranging from written works to drawings, photography, and even craft projects such as knitting and woodworking. Self promotion is welcome (websites where we can view and/or purchase your work). Please do continue to preface if content is NSFW and be sure to properly spoiler/link such content.
For a few years now, I’ve been using the change of seasons to mark various random important dates in my creative calendar–deadlines for comic projects (inevitably delayed), the start of “production seasons” (which I’d been hoping to start shortly after the New Year; hasn’t come off yet, really), and the semi-cull of drawings or paintings I don’t feel make the mark. The last has become the most reliable ritual; I don’t throw the drawings away or anything, but put the discards (maybe “also-rans” is a better term) in a plastic container while the more favored ones stay in my Profolio binders. Culling paintings is a little more fraught; I’ve done more than my share of crap over the years, obviously, but there are more and more works that I think work in a certain light or from a certain viewpoint that I’d have completely ignored without a fresh eye several months or even a couple of years on. If I had a basement or even a larger apartment this wouldn’t be an issue, but I don’t and it is. We’ll see how things end up at the end of today.
Drawing fresh energy and inspiration from an artist biography I’m reading right now (Alex Danchev’s life of Georges Braque), and looking forward not just to a few shows this week (and hopefully a little lighter production at work for the next fortnight or so) but also the Ann Arbor Film Festival, one of town’s most prestigious annual events (starting today, it’s apparently the oldest independent film festival in North America). Even if I’m not able to attend showings, it usually fills the air with a vague summons to inspiration, or at least graft. So here’s hoping. It doesn’t help (or does it?) that spring’s my least favorite season. I don’t dislike it, but I can never trust it.
The header’s Vernal Summons (oil on canvas, May 2019), a case illustrating my earlier dilemma. I really liked it after I first painted it, I kinda went off it after I did some more concentrated works, but now I’m coming back to really liking it again. There was never any danger that I’d toss it, but it serves as a caution.
How’s your work going?
