sunday scribblings

I liked to read words on a sunday
and feel them slip-slide down my throat.
it's rather like drinking a large glass of milk
which has curdled
or plunging into a pool of mud
which is bottomless. I used to
taste words as I read them but
now I find I prefer to
down them quickly.
Eyes across a page, fingers on a spine
I collect hollows without meanings.

"collector personality"

reflections

I started a story called Colour and Light over the summer. It took a very dark turn and I find it difficult to continue writing. In the simplest way, this photograph seems to capture the essence of that story. I wanted it to be all sparkles and glints but the shadows gathered around the edges and now it seems impossible to break out from them.

I suppose this concludes the week-long theme project, Doors Opening/Art Homework. I enjoyed posting my pictures. I hope that you have enjoyed looking at them.

It is feeling stranger and stranger, writing this blog on my own. Emily & me started it together as a co-operative and mutual decision. She is alive and well, but unable to access Internet. It's like you are playing badminton and swing your racquet only to find that the shuttlecock has disapeared into thin air.

journey around school

I had english literature beforehand.


But we started in the art block.


We were sent out-side


I found myself staring


at the many things on the wall.


Nooks and crannies,


whole compositions,


lines and angles,


Colours and shapes.



Don't forget to look up,


even when you feel trapped.

doors opening

Last week I returned to school to start my A-level course. I'm studying French, German, English Literature -and Art. Of course.

I had my first art lesson today. I'm being taught by two teachers, one to take the thematic project, the other life drawing lessons. I'm really excited about the latter, we're going to have life drawing sessions with a professional model every Wednesday until Christmas. People always talk of the figure being the hardest thing to draw, but it happens to be my favourite. I cannot abide drawing landscapes, and still lifes often seem to lack interest. It's people I'm interested in, and people I want to work with. The theme for our coursework is Doorways, and my homework for the week is to "Take 10 photographs of doorways. This does not mean that they have to be doors."

I generally use my digital camera, although I yearn for the ability to use real technical DLRs with real film which you can sink your teeth in to. Here is the first of the ten photographs, and I'll post a little explanation as well. I'm going to say that this homework will be the theme of the fortnight here on Idle Dreaming, as Emily is still unable to be online.

Please feel free to join in with this mini-project if you want to!

#01 sewing machine

I've always been able to sew, and my Paw Paw taught me basic functions on the machine when I was very little. But since taking a short course in g.c.s.e. textiles I have broadened my mind about clothing and creation. Taking the course, and perfecting the usage of those Berninas, Brothers, Toyotas and Singers - plus this one, my very own Frister Rossmann - made me remember that I do actually have a talent, and now I dream of being a costume designer. All since learning how to thread the sewing machine.

sunday scribblings

There's a time every night when I
Get that sinking feeling, it's a
Place in my mind where the
Shadows come to meet. There's a
Flaw in my self which I
Know I can't erase, where I
Plan things too much:
They can never be the same.
I am thinking of one name.

"that sinking feeling"

What happened to Idle Dreaming? Emily has been off-line and I have been busy living. The Clothing as Art project will definately get back into gear soon, I promise. It's something I'm really looking forward too, and I'm waiting till Emily is feeling better. Meanwhile I shall be writing occasionally on here.

Roy Lichtenstein + Mark Rothko

I missed a day last week, so I am combining two artists into one post.

Roy Lichtenstein

Mark Rothko

"I am not an abstract painter. I am not interested in the relationship between form and color. The only thing I care about is the expression of man's basic emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, destiny."

Elisabeth Vellacott

If you've read all of the lists on the sidebar you'll notice that Elisabeth Vellacott is amongst my "loves". I really like the shapes in all of her pictures. This is one of my favourites precisely due to that. The arch is reflected in the sloping shoulders of the dwarf, his stout figure in the bright shabby coat a contrast with the stark, cold black-suited woman.

I also like Vellacott because she really seemed to mix about her dry and wet media, combining pastel with inks, which is something I like to do as well. Additionally she just sounds like one cool old lady.

The painting on the left is called "The Dwarf", by Elisabeth Vellacott, 1953, oil on canvas.

Here is a short biography of hers.

More works.

Info on The Dwarf.

Other favourites are "The madwoman banging her dustbin-lids" (movement is captured so cinematically); "Evening walk no. 2" (emotion); and "The Queue" (you feel their boredom).

Maggie Taylor

A dramatic change of pace regarding the artists, one of my next artists to focus on will be Maggie Taylor.

Her work reminds me of a mixture between fairytales and dreams - which in some ways can be the same thing. The fantastic and unusual blended with imaginary things.

Gustave Klimt

Emily introduced you to our secret project in the last post so I thought that I'd mention a few more artists who are going to be involved. There should be a total of 10 artists, five each, and here is one which I'm including.

You will of course know of Gustave Klimt. He & I share the same birthday, which is Bastille day, although there are several underlying differences between us:

1. Gustave Klimt was 96 years older than me,
2. Gustave Klimt was undoubtedly a pervert and,
3. Gustave Klimt was a man.

Best known for his iconic portrait in the shape of an erect phallus, you are probably familiar with The Kiss. (see right). The Kiss isn't actually my favourite picture. Klimt's portraits embody colour in a way that is so rich, yet he manages to not let it be overpowering. The faces, pale and stark by comparison with the gold-leaf shrouds his figures wear, draw the viewer's eyes to them immediately. There is a great sense of passion.

Klimt isn't a painter whose works I love, in the sense that I like the portraits but he wouldn't be on my list of favourites, far from it. So why did I choose to include him? Not sure myself really, perhaps the answer will lie in sleep.

clothing as art: part 2

over the next month or so, Anushka and I are going to be having a secret 'challenge' of sorts. to introduce this, over the next few days I will be writing a little bit on a few artists which are involved in this secret project.

first off, one of my recently discovered favorites: Edward Hopper. I had never heard of him, though I had seen one or two of his paintings. the Smithsonian magazine had a very interesting article on his work -- I will include a few excerpts from it as well as photos of Hopper's work.

-Rooms by the Sea

"Painting did not come easily to Edward Hopper. Each canvas represented a long, morose gestation spent in solitary thought. There were no sweeping brushstrokes from a fevered hand, no electrifying eurekas. He considered, discarded and pared down ideas for months before he even squeezed one drop of paint onto his palette."


""Hopper simply happens to be a bad painter. But if he were a better painter, he would, most likely, not be so superior an artist.""
-Clement Greenberg


"Hopper's 'equivocal human figures engaged in uncertain relationships mark his paintings as modern' as strongly as his gas pumps and telephone poles."

Dalí & Film

Hi! I am back from the realms of the Continually Assessed, having finished the taking of my GCSEs and just about recovered. It's very strange, you know, having finished them, but let's not linger on that. I shall try to make more of an effort to update this blog and not let it become a wearisome task. Emily's Internet access has been out, or so I gather from her mom.

Today I went to the Tate with my fairy godmother, who is a member, to see the Dalí & Film exhibition. One thing which I really love about the Tate Modern, aside from the fact that they more or less leave you along to gaze at the pictures for distinctive amounts of time, is that they honestly encourage students to go there. All of the collections can be viewed for free, and the exhibitions are free for under-12s. I am sure that they used to be free for under-18s, as I definately didn't pay to see Frida Kahlo, but the website suggests that there is merely a £2 reduction.

The exhibition itself was really a pleasant one to be in. This of course may be different at more peak periods (we were there at lunchtime on a week-day) but today it was relatively empty. The rooms are large and the spaces between the pictures managed the usual feeling of tight claustrophobia to be omitted this time. Compared to the Hogarth at the Tate Britain, say, it was actually a nice place to be in.

There are 14 rooms, 3 or 4 or 5 of them showing films. The exhibition includes his paintings and a couple of sculptures at the beginning, with all of the usual lot: The Persistance of Memory, The Invisible Man, the lobster telephone, and Sphinx Embedded in Sand. As you move into the exhibition its subject reveals it self, Dalí's relation to film and cinema becoming clearer. A couple of particularly interesting rooms showed plans for a film which was either not made or not completed (I forget which) and also a series of story boards for an animation which was. This animation, not finished until 2003 (obviously after his demise) had been a collaboration with W. Disney (yes, that's the one) that was as a series of images, resembling Fantasia (which quite frankly I never got, but I quite liked this one).

They show the dream sequence, lasting merely 2 minutes, from Alfred Hitchcock's 'Spellbound', which I really enjoyed watching, as it combined aspects from the drifting lands of Dalí's surreal worlds (which are seen at the beginning of the exhibit, before the film stuff - I guess it gets it into your head) as well as employing dramatic cinematic effects. What was funny was that my godmother, a film director and scriptwriter, were examining the pictures and I was talking about the mystery they held, which I reckon is due to the light. You have a lot of drifting currents of air, very soft light, very mysterious, and then suddenly, often towards the centre, a figure with an extremely sharp outlined shadow, in immediate contrast. And yet the source of light in the paintings is not clear. Emily, my godmother, told me that in cinema it would be impossible to create that effect as there would have to be a very strong light shining on the object in question, a strong light which was absent from Dalí's scenes. And yet, in the film, this was achieved - or at least, the illusion of it.

One note - I guess I've never seen any of his pictures in the flesh before. I was surprised, shocked even, at how small they all really are. I don't know why so shocked, but I was expecting canvases four, five, six times the size at least. But there you are.

All in all and exhibition worth seeing, I think, even if you're not an extraordinary fan of Dalí. I was aware of his relations with film, and Hitchcock; I thought that he had designed film sets, perhaps a collaboration with Elsa Schiaparelli, who got him as well as several other surrealists to design her a couple of dresses. There is a lobster dress, for instance. But this takes a slightly different angle to the usual stuff you normally see about him, which was refreshing. Yes, worth seeing, even if you're just looking for a comfortable screening of Un Chien Andalou.


Information on the exhibition can be found on the Tate Modern website: click here

And more info on the Tate Mod., including visiting information (get the tube to Southwark and follow the orange lampposts, is my advice): on their website .

lovelies, no time or energy to post the clothing as art sequel right now. to hold you over until the next 'installment' here are a few links that will be related in some way to my next post:

International Dress-up Day
Style Bubble
Neet Magazine

clothing as art #1

as you may have noticed, my posting has been far less often than Anushka's -- for which i apologize. summer is finally beginning though, so i hope that i can spend more time updating this blog.

on to the post. if you have ever read my other blog, than you may have noticed than i have a deep fascination with clothing. i love making it, looking at it, but most of all wearing it. there is so much that can be expressed with one simple outfit. but finding inspiration for a different outfit every day can be frustrating. to help myself with this, i created a 'look book' of sorts. it is just a simple blank paged notebook in which i glue pictures, write out ideas, and sometimes make mini models of projects i would like to make. doing this has actually helped quite a bit.


each section is a certain look. they are all seperate pictures, but each page has a theme of sorts. depending on my mood, i pick a different page and then make an outfit from that pieces that most inspire me at the moment.


i only recently started the book, so it is a little bit sparse right now. as i make progress i will post pictures, as well as some of the outfits or inspirations that have come out of it.

here are some of my favorite places to find fashion inspiration pictures:
hel-looks (certainly my favorite)
CPH
Fashionist
wardrobe_remix (another favorite)
Face Hunter

more on this topic next post.

Vessel wednesday #2

You'll have noticed that we've not actually posted anything involving art yet. Photography is a cheap means of getting around that. I know that it is its own medium and all that, but to be honest, I take really bad pictures....and somehow render them a thousand times more pleasing when drawn. Drawing though takes time which I'm short of at the moment. This will be my last post, on this and all other of my blogs, for about one month.



Tomorrow morning I will draw one out of our numerous (eight - gasp!) entrants for the New Beginnings prize draw. I know I said there were to be two people last time, but I'm kind of busy taking my g.c.s.e.s right now.

Emily is MIA. I haven't had an e-mail for a little while now. She's either ill (hopefully not), taking a screenbreak (hurry up) or busy with life and school.

vessel wednesday #1

Perfection is folly.



Utter ridiculousness.



Photography both masks and unveils content.



Life can seem a bed of roses when it's merely a nesting-place for maggots.



The opposite applies too, of couse.



Aphid-eaten roses still brighten up my room.

without gravity

it rained, and she begged me to jump on the trampoline with her...

...jumping up and down that high with a laughing 5 year old, makes life seem to simple...

...life without gravity.

i prefer to use film when taking pictures.
it requires more time and effort, but the little mistakes and blurs are what make the picture unique.
in a world where everything is automatic and instant, using film requires one to focus on the work they are trying to create--on the scene they are trying to capture.

hide away

I can't remember the last time that I wrote a poem but it was some time back in March. I tried participating in Poetry Thursday for a few weeks running but like most things the excitement petered out. I'm surrounded by shelves and exercise books, exams that are approaching which call out for work to be done, lessons to be relearnt, when really I don't want to do any of it, none at all. I can't even find the will to paint any more, or draw in ink. Nothing. I have passages of prose swirling around in my head every day but it's getting to the point where being unable to write them down is unbearable. I just want to travel on a train to a far-away country where shadows fly and birds are green. I want to leave this place behind, I want to pull wool over my eyes. I want to be able to sit and spin a silken thread into a length of string which I can knit into a cape to wrap around my bare browned shoulders. I want it to be summer again and in wales again, eight years ago (or was it nearly nine) when I'm in the black mountains standing barefoot in a stream with the cool water trickling through my toes and the air currents blowing gently by. I want to find that total happiness where you can be completely in the moment, not worrying about when the day ends, just content to be. I don't want to catch myself every time I think of Brazil. I don't want that melancholy feeling to being sinking into me, starting at my crown and pulling me down down down. I don't want to exagerrate sadness like I am doing now, I want to be happy, free, lost in a Rothko painting where colour is the ruler of all. I want to escape.

Saturday morning

The view from my bed:










Art exam = excellent. Finished 30 seconds before it ended. Now, I am absolutely knackered despite getting up at 11.45 this morning, as I also had a concert last night which ended at 10pm.

Oh yes, and how could I forget:



Hosted by Christine at Paper and Cloth, this contest is in association with a sponsered walk that Christine is doing in aid of a breast cancer charity.

new beginnings

Distance.

How does one express it?

Distance is playing the prelude to Bach's first cello suite in a melancholic augmented way.

Distance is dipping a brush into water and spreading it over paper, only the hint of a pigment in view.

Distance is being totally indifferent to somebody linked to you.

Distance is writing a letter to somebody you've never met.

Tomorrow a project climaxes in my g.c.s.e. art exam, and I see what could be the end to a very lonely school-year beginning to approach. Looking over the three projects that we have done over Year Eleven I clearly see the turning point, the day or week or month on which I flipped my heart and my mind around and decided: I am an artist. As much as anyone else in my art group is. I am one and it's not being pretentious to label myself as such. I am a maker, quite simply. I look back over three projects and five work journals and think of those words I typed out, so very long ago now. Words rushing out straight of my mind: free verse. Then, as always follows with me, a poem, rhymes form with structure.

And you, you're as artist, I said

To him. A painter, yes, he

Replied, as if distinguishing those

Two things from one another were

Very important.

Distance.

How does one accept it?

Emily and I live very far apart. And yet we're also very good friends. Sometimes I wonder if writing e-mails is so different from writing letters. Why should the relationship that forms be seen as so very different than with paper-and-pen friends?

To celebrate the start of Idle Dreaming Emily & I are running a give-away. To be eligible for entry all you have to do is leave a comment about anything at all on this post by the 16th of May (which gives you a whole week!), making sure that you state your e-mail address very clearly. I will draw the name of a winner out of a hat on the 17th of May.

The prizes....

Each of two winners will receive a little bundle of goodies which may or may not include an ATC, a pincushion or a broach. It will be a surprise, probably depending on who wins!

Remember to leave a comment by the 16th with your e-mail address to be entered in to the draw. Good luck (and wish me success in my art exam).

About

We are Emily & Anushka. We are two teenagers who are obsessed with making things and looking to opening even further the aspect of creativity in our lives. As an art blog we wish for Idle Dreaming to help us channel and share our discoveries with you. In an age where technology rules all we want to promote using it for positive means, to enhance gathering of knowlege; when children spend hours engrossed with the television rather than story-books we want to state for once and for all that art is not for idle dreamers.

We truly believe... that art is photography, fashion, knitting, embroidery, sculpture, textiles, drawing and anything else which forces one to create using the heart and the mind, whilst making with one's hands and one's eyes.

Emily likes...
the things: black and white photos, pink, eclectic clothes, and charcoal pencils.
the places: thrift shops of most any sort, my room-there i can be alone to think, and sitting on the grass in the public park on a sunny day.
the crafts: designing and sewing clothes, drawing, photography, and a bit of knitting.
the techniques: stenciling and attempting to screen-print
In very few words, Emily thinks that she is... a little bit of everything.
Emily lives... in a little town in Colorado - but I like to imagine myself somewhere like NYC.
Other blogs...
http://thesquarepeg.wordpress.com/
http://likeabird.wordpress.com/
E-mail... squarepegetsy[at]gmail.com (soon to change...)

Anushka likes...
the things: drawing ink, hand-dyed yarn, fountain pens and pretty shoes which fit.
the places: Vancouver when the cherry-trees blossom. Hyde Park on a Summer's Day. And the Tate Modern because they let you sit on the bench for hours drawing the sculptures and don't tell you to bugger off. They also let you spend hours in the shop pretending to be selecting magazines when really you are reading them really really quickly so that you don't have to fork out eight quid for something you don't really need.
the crafts: knitting, sewing, crude hand-embroidery and papier mache.
the techniques: ink wash
In very few words, Anushka thinks that she is... Foremost a writer.
Anushka Lives... in London, England (though would prefer to be elsewhere)
Other blogs...
http://magic-fingers.blogspot.com/ - a craft blog
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nushbush - Flickr photos
E-mail... nushbush(at)gmail.com