Moleskine Exchange Exhibition

It's been a bit quiet around this, but the Moley Exchange is almost finished. Just last week I received my moley back. And, how different did it look to when I posted it off in Spring.

Page 1 in Lines, Lineages and Linings Moley
Quote and sketch of one of de Stael's paintings

Its theme was Lines, Lineages and Linings. I started it with a quote by de Stael on the abyss opened up by lines on an empty sheet of paper and my favourite composition of the study plains.

Now it acquired a multitude of different approaches to the theme, as collage, a bit of oil, pen and ink, some free-hand sewing, some pop-out men-in-skirts, some delicate pastel work and more mixed media wizardry.

I remembered that one of my earliest questions to do with sketchbooks was on how to stretch their versatility. This is the main thing I've learned through the exchange: so many different ways of using the sketchbooks as galleries and experimental planes for a variety of media. And that's something I greatly appreciate and want to thank everyone involved in this!

Do you want to have a look at the sketchbooks? They will be on display from Monday onwards at the Learning and Resource Centre of the University of Ulster, Belfast Campus, York Street, BelfastBT15 1ET.

Travelog

Lindsay's Maps and Destination Moley
36x14cm, Pen, ink and neo ii

The most recent moley I had from the exchange had gone travelling with me to London, Berlin and back to Glasgow. I like the idea of figuring out what to do next in each moley a lot: it's storytelling as process, and it's interesting to see how different each of us deals with the storytelling.

So: mine was action drawing... hahaha... on 9x14cm with a pen... no paint dribbles in sight.

Have a look - out of the window on the 9:39 am Glasgow - London Euston for 20 mins or so; a tube ride from Mile End to Victoria, until someone sat next to me and obscured the view; after breakfast in my friends' living room in Berlin when they had gone for work; and yet another airport queue in Schoenefeldt while the passport control was slow as usual. I coloured in when back home.

Lindsay's Maps and Destination Moley
9x14cm, Pen, ink and neo ii


Lindsay's Maps and Destination Moley
9x14cm, Pen, ink and neo ii


Lindsay's Maps and Destination Moley
9x14cm, Pen, ink and neo ii


Lindsay's Maps and Destination Moley
9x14cm, Pen, ink and neo ii

Without a horizon...

I got a couple of new books - some on loan, some to keep, and all of them are about landscape/water/seascapes. Perhaps the best to start with is the most recent sketchbook from our Moley Exchange.

The latest addition in Lindsay's 'Maps and Destination' book are two seascapes in oil/coloured pencil by Vivien. I am so pleased to have them for the time being... By now the oils are pretty dry but when I first got a couple of weeks back, they weren't. There's a lot of detail in these sketches: water colour, changes, movement, spray, some rocks.

Vivien Blackburn, Splashdown,
Oil/Coloured pencil in Moleskine 18x14cm
See here for Vivien's own discussion on this entry in her blog
And here for the Moley exchange blog entry

Neither of them has a horizon line. But, structured by lines they are nonetheless. This one has a strong foreground with rock and plenty of spray. Yet, what intrigued me most was the water in the middleground: there's a wave on it's way, not quite built up yet, nowhere near breaking but it's rolling. It seems to me that Vivien's achieved this effect by line work and colour change.

Detail, Vivien Blackburn, Splashdown

Have a look at this detail: Clear linear marks in oil mark the advancing wave; in front of it, thinly applied oils with most of the colour (change) achieved through coloured pencil. It seems so much more still and calm in comparison to the line behind it that keeps moving forward.

So, do other structuring lines take the place of a clear horizon line to help make sense of a painting? Perhaps the horizon is just the most obvious, clear, understood way of demarcating heaven/earth, up/down, inside/outside and also indicate a piece as in fact a landscape?

A piece by August Strindberg that confused me when I first saw it:

August Strindberg, The Wave vii, 1901 Musee D'Orsay

It confused me for its abstract qualities. If it wasn't for the title, I wouldn't have made out 'what' it was. So, it's a landscape, but doesn't allow for easy (presumptious?) reading of such. Writing this, it becomes clear that this is of course nothing new: abstraction is the name of the game, I suppose. By taking it out of easily understood contexts, by verfremden - making it strange/foreign/alien.

As with the Strindberg piece, there is obviously also something about perspective and view point, and I've done some work on changing perspective and viewpoint on the shoreline sketches. Something is fairly straightforward, technical: as in vanishing points, angles and so on.

And, while I was stumped for a bit of what do with my entry in Lindsay's moley, I have a plan: I'll take it travelling with me... maps and destinations need a bit of journey, I think...

Help... she's painting people

... even worse: small people.

In the close, Detail
Mixed media in small Moleskine

But thanks to Joan Eardley, I'm confident that a bit of over the top colour scheme along with collage will help me out with my poor people drawing skills.

This is a small detail (as in 3x2cm) of my entry into Lorraine's Moleskine. Theme: close. And playing to stereotypes, I'm sticking with a literal, physical Glasgow tenement close. Well, which is in fact a lot closer in many ways that are not literal, but that's by the by.

There is another detail in the Moleskine Blog, but I think that will be all the early gossiping you'll get about this one, until it's in Vivien's safe hands to post the whole sketch.

I think it's finished. But just in case it isn't, I'll put it to the side for a few days. It's fairly complex for a small Moleskine, so I'm sure I'll find a couple of things to play with when I look at it again.

The little child in a pram is in fact a steal straight out of one of Eardley's paintings... do you know which one?

Dance, dance, dance

Lykke Li Dance Dance Dance (Bowery Ballroom, NYC, 7 May 2008)

From gigs to themed Moley's... here's a glimpse at my work in progress on David's moley...

Last weekend's gig, last night's music and today's idea. There'll be a bit more on colour, paint and music.

Now I just need to figure a way to make those small pages large again.

In the post... this time:

David's Moley and his Tango dancers

David's Moley from our Moleskine Exchange. His theme of Dancing is the one I'm slightly worried about: it clearly shouts: Gesa, draw figures! at me. And not just any old figures, but people dancing.
Hm, well... maybe it doesn't. I need to think about this for a while. David's Tango dancers in oil pastels are an excellent start, so I could digress to: oil pastels, blue, Spain, Flamenco, castagnettes, sound... I'm sure I'll find some more associations.

BTW: to my Flamenco-dancing friends: how about some pics from your last show? And I could go into Portraiture commissioning. Or maybe not, I don't think anyone would pay me for that. LOL.

Moleskining - internationally and exchangingly

I've acquired not only a new Moleskine but also a new project. And not only that: a group project.
Yellow Steph had been bitten by the Moleskine exchange bug and so eight of us have now purchased a small concertina moleskine each which will be posted around the world. Well, not quite aroound the world but back and forth between the UK and the US; with each of us filling each book as we receive it with a few more pages. Eventually, each books ends up back with the original owner - filled with drawings, sketches, little paintings done by everyone else.

It sounds like excellent fun. I have gotten to really like the ideas of artist books, shared projects and the dynamics that brings with it. So, this is an excellent way of taking that further. Many, many thanks to Steph for organising and everyone else for being similarly excited.

We have set up a blog for the project at http://moleskineexchange.blogspot.com/ to chart, discuss and illustrate the travels of each of the books, so pop by to see what's going on. The blog also gives you the list of everyone involved, some nice maps and, also importantly: the themes each one is giving to their books.

I'd like to write a bit more about it, but it's late just now.

But have a link to the Flickr Moley_x group for some more background...