New project ''Goldfish Bowl''

Hello to my new follower. I was diagnosed as being very mildly autistic two years ago and with my new friend have started to love painting again. I have started a whole new project because the horse project well it didnt work out. I'm spending most of my hours every day at my studio and am loving every minute being there. My new project im just loving now that I have a new art friend to share my ideas with. I will be posting more of my new project work. 




The two drawings above are where I started at the very beginning of the project you can see here how the drawings improve as I work on the design for the painting.

I design my paintings in a sketch book first I always work this way then when im happy with the design I take the ideas into paint. Before I make my paintings there are usually many hours of sketch book work. I make figurative work I draw buildings and also things from nature to make my final pieces. This project is about having autism and living in a "fish bowl."I met a friend who wrote a poem called the "Goldfish bowl."It was very descriptive, and since I think in pictures the images came to mind and I decided to paint the poem. I cant write poetry but I can see the images it creates in my minds eye. The image of the street on the right is bugging me because in real life its ruler straight and the camera has distorted the perspective so that it looks inaccurate on here. The project itself, like I said is about autism. Like feeling trapped like being inside a goldfish bowl. Mood swinging from happy to sad, happy to sad, happy to sad like being on a swing one cannot get off. Telling the none autistics of the world the ones that do not understand we cannot help our differences over and over and over again covering the same old ground backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards until eventually you want to get off and puke. If you can imagine the muffled sounds and the claustrophobia if you lived inside a tank. I painted this to given none autistics an understanding of what it ''sometimes'' feels like for us living in the world of ''autism.'' It doesn't always swing from happy to sad some days its good and I am happy I don't want to give others a negative view of autism either there are good days too but the muffled sounds and misunderstandings do mostly occur. Next i will be finishing off the street drawing back at my studio then incorporating the new drawings onto the fist tank drawing. 

14th April 2011
I was working in my sketch book again today still designing the painting as you can see by the above image ive been working on the perspective drawing of the street again. I think I will just leave the drawing as pencil next I will add the drawings from observation and the fish tank to the perspective drawing. I will then draw it a few times in different media to get it right then I will start adding the drawing to canvas. catch you later again. :o)

16th April 2011

Here is the latest update of the above. I'm afraid its not a great shot im considering investing in a digital camera. You can see here how i was holding the phone which has again distorted the perspective. You can see from this the edge of the paper. The drawing is accurately straight mobile phones are not always wonderful for taking pictures. The whole drawing wouldn't fit into the camera screen as it is a very large A2 drawing so if you want to see all of the drawing in working progress i will have to show you it in sections.

Here is a closer view of the drawing. I have decided to make the final painting symbolic. Eventually when i feel happy with the design I am going to colour the sky using the colours of the American autism awareness ribbon which is red, yellow and two different shades of blue I will possibly use the colours of the visible spectrum in places also. You can slowly see the design taking shape there are other people I am adding to this drawing as well. As you can see the fish tank is in the street where other children are playing oblivious to the girl in the tank. This is the street outside my studio window with cars going by its quite a boring dingy view which i though would be the perfect scene for the tank. I've added the tank to the left of the composition because i will be drawing other children in the composition and adding more bricks to the building in the image itself. Sketch books do not have to be wonderfully accurate as long as the final painting itself is as accurate as possible its how the ideas are developed in the early stages that make a wonderful painting really happen.



Wed 20th April 2011
You can now see from the image above how the drawing is taking shape. Despite the very bad camera shot, you can now see the street, the road and part of the buildings. I think I am almost ready to start on my final painting with this but first I want to re fresh my memory on colour theory I will will look at German Expressionism for that before I start my final piece. The German Expressionists were a group of artists from the 1930s that used colour to express Emotion they are my favourite art movement. Well there were much older Expressionist painters like August Macke 1887-1914 then Nolde which was 1930s he was born later but is generally that expressionism came from the 1930s Hitler had an exhibition called entartata cunst sorry cant spell, in German, which mean degenerate art he burned the expressionist painters work including Nolde's and banned him
from painting including many religious art works.

26th April 2011 You can now see how this drawing above is almost finished all I needed was an idea mapped out on paper took a little while to get that idea drawn out but here it is. You can see the emotion in the sky, it represents an autistics feelings which are usually all mixed up feelings for us are hard to understand. I've actually started on the final piece today on canvas but I want to research German Expressionism colours again before i start painting the building tomorrow i will show you the start of the final piece. :o)

Wednesday May 4th 2011

Hello yippeeeee!!! the final painting has been started. I had bit of trouble with cheap paints which weren't vibrant enough to make purple it was bothering me so I borrowed some of the studios spectrum acrylic colour, i mixed it with almost everything LOL to brighten the painting up, i mixed it with blue, red, and orange the blue was really dull so i took a large blob or spectrum purple and mixed it with my cheap prussian blue paint that brightened that up. You can see here opposite right how its dull the above shot is slightly brighter that's because I added more paint. there are a few faults with the prep drawings which i know about and am correcting in the final piece.

Its not particularly the expressionists style that I find pleasing its the colours they use I have my own style. I also like Fauvism for the colours they used as well anything with vivid colour I seem to just like a lot.

I was thinking how I could make that ellipse better on that fish bowl I perspective of that is wrong, also i need to look into where exactly the shadows would be at sunset as the picture is set at sunset and i drew the observational drawing of the building which is actually garages during the day. That's easily sorted stay till really late and look at the shadows in the setting outside the window :o)