Trees, Cars, Penguins & Motorphobia

 Treelanders

Citroen Tree

One reason these car drawings came about must be down to the underlying  perversity of human nature. If this isn't true then why is it that one sure way of digging yourself out of a creative rut is to direct your energies towards the opposite of what attracts you (in this case cars). 

Until recently, if I drew a street scene I'd automatically edit out the autos (unless they were pre 1930's vintage), in fact the idea of painting any modern car would really jar. I had a bad case of artistic motorphobia. 

So following a well known treatment for phobias I tried a variation on the gradual exposure technique and tried combining my car/fear with my plant/love into one drawing. It seemed to work. I felt strangely inspired and very soon was enjoying the subtle curves of a sleek ferrari more than the twists and turns of a pumpkin vine. But  while reflecting on this revelation I remembered the penguins.  
       

The Penguins

During a particularly apathetic phase as a young art student I found myself sitting in that most hated of places the ceramics studio and being angrily told by my tutor to stop moping about and get on with something. So to keep him quiet I picked up a boring lump of clay and pretended to be interested.  An hour later I'd made my first ceramic penguin and within a week or so was transformed from the runt of the class to the new ceramics golden boy.

Having made my penguin prototype, along with a simple three piece mould I was able to slip caste it and produce a whole army of penguins which I then painted as individual anthropomorphised characters. 

some of the survivors: Mrs Goggins, Perry & Waggy (looking slightly battered)

People loved them, the tutors went mad, they all wanted one. This left me in shock, surely I was destined to be a famous painter, an artist of great standing, honoured many times over at the royal academy summer exhibitions. Things now looked very different though, the future was no longer populated by adoring art critics but by penguins wearing silly costumes, all because I'd let myself be persuaded to go against a gut instinct, that ceramics was not for me.

I still have some of those original model penguins (even though they have a tendency to topple over onto their beaks) and I'm sure they can still be found tucked away in some dusty corner of an ex-tutors bookshelf but in the end they didn't bring me any fame or fortune, perhaps because I stubbornly reverted back to some of those gut feelings.             

What to do with a Brand New Ferrari?

Tomato & Sweetcorn Convertible*

Forgotten Ferrari

Beetle Home

Decomposition with Ferrari and 8c Spiders

* all models shown work exclusively on biofuel



I was not really sure what to do with this blog, so I could have called this post 'what to do with a brand new blog' instead, and avoided the risk of upsetting any Ferrari lovers with a sensitive disposition, which I would sincerely hate to do.

However, I've decided to make this blog unashamedly broad ranging and try also to grapple with the problem of writing about your own work without sounding pompous, self congratulatory, pretentious or worst of all boring.   

An impossible task you may think and an unnecessary deviation from the philosophy that  pictures should speak for themselves. But apparently the search engines are not impressed by wordless blogs and it is good to talk even if its to yourself.

When I'm teaching I often hear myself giving a student advice that I think would be better directed at my own work or setting projects that I've always wanted to do myself but never got round to, a bit like the novel that never gets written.

So this blog, while not being risky will risk the loss of some mystique by making some honest remarks about trying to be creative and by acknowledging that in drawing cars I've learned more than ever before just how beautiful a Ferrari can be, which is not saying much.