Egg Tempera, work, bass – Sounds like a “coming of age” self journey book title, dunnit

Work

Working again has spurred my creativity at the same time as removing the time I have to spend doing it. That is so annoying.

Work is…well. Been as a personal journey of figuring out what I want and what I seriously do not want, incredibly informative.  I’m working on a short term contract as a consultant on day rates, which has been a bit of a (good) shock to the bank balance.  I’m back into the rhythms of working life again.

I’ve been working out how much I know, how much I know how to do – and this has been really good. I have been honing certain skills for years; I didn’t really understand until now exactly how skilled I am at certain types of work. I knew I could do stuff, but…it wasn’t so much Imposter Syndrome but that the general vibe of places I’ve previously worked were excellent at squashing me into little rigid boxes that they would not allow me to escape from. Stifling and hampering, other than a few of the managers I had, I was not enabled.

Only by moving on have I the clarity of hindsight.

I also am forming resolutions about the sort of place I want to work next, the current role has helped me a lot on that front.

Is also interesting coming into a workplace where I am not known. I have no reputation, I can’t assume people will know that I know stuff. So I’m having to demonstrate that.

As an aside, I am also currently working with the person who runs this site: it’s a listing of art prizes. Really useful site, I need to get off my ass and start applying to enter these things.

Bass

I have decided to take bass lessons. I was not progressing. I’m doing finger exercises on the fretboard just using all fingers with my hands in the correct positions, it’s astonishing what a difference It’s already making after one lesson!

Wow this in an old photo, I’d forgotten my lounge room was yellow.

Egg

I’m trying to figure out if it’s possible to be a bit more modern with using Egg Tempera as a painting medium. And yes, it is, after a bit of noodling around…. egg noodling….. LOL.

I’ve done egg tempera before but not for a while. It’s a really difficult medium. I mean, even watercolour made more sense, at least it made more sense faster than this one has.

I have been painting some classic landscapes in my own style. I don’t like this as a medium for this sort of landscape – it dries too fast and the colours you lay down are too immediate and not able to be changed once applied other than to paint over them. Seems I rely on that.

Watercolours and Oils you can blend once you paint. You can’t really do this with ET. It’s like a sort of lovechild blend mix of acrylic, pencil, and gouache – with quirks unique to itself that you’re not going to get unless you start to use it.

To play around, I made up a bunch of rough panels using MDF and the size/gesso – I described the process here. I think one of the things causing my hesitation to do a lot with ET is that the amount of prep work to get a ground to work on is just crazy – and I don’t want to ‘waste’ the prepared panels. I should experiment more with different grounds and find the ones with the least amount of work.

This painting below is sort of ok, not what I expected. I don’t have a lot of colours to experiment with, so I’m working with that limitation, I guess it’s challenging me and that’s not a bad thing either. I gave up on this one. Mabye I’ll come back to it one day. I was not enjoying it at all.

Yeah, this one is just a boring tree trunk. Did not enjoy drawing it.

Also played around with flicking, dropping in, washing over, speckling, in the background here. This was fun. I did the eucalptus over it randomly to see what it looked like to draw over the background. It gave me ideas for something totally different to do next, so there’s that.

I will master you, egg tempera. I am finally starting to work with you, not against you, this is how I worked out watercolour in the end. I stopped struggling and lamenting and fighting and started enjoying.