Friday, February 29, 2008

Art-Form Envy

I can't draw or paint, so in my youth I tried photography; I still enjoy it as a hobby but I never worked hard enough to become more than a hit-or-miss armature, and in my pre-auto focus days, my eyesight became too big of an obstacle.

I like the structural restrictions loom-weaving presents and am comfortable working within these limits. Having said that, sometimes I suffer from art-form envy, art forms of the more "freehand" persuasion, and the people who can work in those forms. Initially I envied those who could draw, paint, make prints, sculpt/carve, and make jewelry; then I envied milliners, textile mixed-media artists and felters, but most recently, (though loom-weaving is definitely the art-form of my choice,) I've been envying the free-spirited creativity seen in visual diaries and crazy-imaginative bookbinding, (the last being a composite of visual diaries, scrap-booking and bookbinding.) I have a hard time thinking outside the square, so some of the books I've seen on these subjects boggle this tiny mind.

My visual diaries are practical; they are more notes and doodles to remind me how I did something, or wobbly line drawings of outcome I hope to achieve from my projects. And because I can't draw or paint, my books are bulging with magazine clippings and photographs, fabric swatches, yarn samples, and occasionally, leaves and feathers. Naturally, my books are spiral-bound.

I still pine for those seductive, gentle pages awash in watercolor and drawn in ink, though, and would love to try it. So quite separate from my normal visual diaries, I bought a hard-covered sketchbook today. It might take five or ten years to fill it up, but I think I'll give it a go. Mind you, this is going to be strictly for-my-eyes-only unless I decide I want to give you a good laugh.

Do you keep artwork-like visual diaries?

2 comments:

  1. No, i don't keep artwork visual diaries, though I look at paintings a lot for inspiration on color and design. I too sometimes resent the structure imposed by the loom, and much of my crackle adventure is motivated in part by trying to conquer that. I never shall, but that's OK. Also, if you try various of the other apparently freer arts, you will probably find they have their own limitations and that artists there struggle with those.

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  2. I admit, art or otherwise, that I've never sat down long enough to investigate anything seriously before weaving, and I'm just at the start of exploring weaving now, so I might as well leave the rest in other, more capable hands, but sometimes they do appear to be so ... free.

    Printing/dyeing and surface design is another area that wow me.

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