Samples 2015: Week 2, Mondrian

White felt applied to black using embellisher. French knots in hand dyed red perle thread.

Source picture

From this article in the Saturday Guardian 10/01/15:

 

“Abstract art: from the radical to the everyday. Mondrian’s bold grids, Malevich’s Black Square, Jenny Holzer’s top secret redacted government documents ... a new exhibition celebrates the point and edge of 100 years of abstraction.”

Piet Mondrian’s Composition with Yellow, Blue and Red (1937).

Sample design

Again I had to think twice and not attempt to imitate the source picture! So I took a small section at an angle, and made it fuzzy and textural.  

Weekly Sample Project 2015 – Newspaper Images

What do you mean the year’s nearly a twelfth gone already?!

I have been quietly getting on with my latest challenge, honest - just too busy to blog it.

 

I wanted challenge, constraints, variety, nudging out of my comfort zone. But also manageable, and shareable.

 

So, the idea is:

• Choose an image from the Saturday Guardian newspaper (any section)
• Create a sample inspired by that image (trying to think laterally not literally)
• Mount on an A4 page with the heading and original image

And sharing?

 

I’d like to blog these, including showing you the original image and context. Easy – just find the same article on the paper’s website, right?

 

Wrong. Apparently, the articles and images aren’t always the same online. So if I can’t find the image I want I’ll have to work with another one.

 

Nothing’s ever simple!

How to be inspired

I do love my Guardian newspaper. My day isn’t complete without it; I always feel it’s such a shame my birthday is one of only two days a year (apart from Sundays) it’s never published!

Anyway it came up trumps again yesterday with a long feature on how a variety of creative people find creative inspiration – artists, musicians, dancers, playwrights etc. You can read it here.

If you haven’t got time for the whole article, these are my favourite bits from artist Polly Morgan:

• Don't wait for a good idea to come to you. Start by realising an average idea – no one has to see it. If I hadn't made the works I'm ashamed of, the ones I'm proud of wouldn't exist.

• Don't try to second-guess what people will want to buy. Successful artists have been so because they have shown people something they hadn't imagined. If buyers all knew what they wanted before it had been made, they could have made it themselves, or at least commissioned it.

• Don't be afraid to scrap all your hard work and planning and do it differently at the last minute. It's easier to hold on to an idea because you're afraid to admit you were wrong than to let it go.

OK, these might not be totally original ideas, but they’re certainly ones I need reminding of now and then!