Jeni Caruana
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Drawing on our differences

18/4/2016

1 Comment

 
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"Rock Nude 2" available as a print
We have been using Art to communicate for 34,000 years. At least, that’s as far back as we can actually date humans drawing and painting on rocks and the walls of caves.
We don’t know what happened before then of course; less permanent methods of mark making are lost to us forever. We also have no idea what those beautiful cave paintings signify – were they magical means of capturing reality, plans for the hunt, shamanic rites of passage or simply means of expressing life as they saw it?
I like the theory that, as the cave paintings are carefully placed to become part of the uneven surfaces they adorn, they represent the shaman’s ability to travel between the worlds. That what we see is superficial to the hidden world where everything is one profound and plentiful soup of living energy.
​The shaman contacts the spirit of animal or plant to commune with all of life.
Besides imagery we self-express through music, dance and the written word. The wonder of a sunset, the sorrow of loss, the joy and hope of a new birth, life often touches us deeply and we are moved to find ways to share it with others. We smile, hug, cry, give gifts. We celebrate and commiserate. It’s what makes us human.
Art can tap into this deep emotional urge to communicate abstract emotions that are beyond words. This can vary from the literal translation of a scene to the darkest of obscure abstractions. Ultimately we are speaking to ourselves, making our feelings visible. How well we manage to do that depends on our level of expertise, and can be very frustrating if your drawing is like a seven year old’s, or your painting of a sunset turns to shades of brown.

It would be lovely (if a little boring after a while) to produce professional standard artworks every time, but ask yourself WHY you are painting/drawing?
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Is it to please someone else or yourself?
Assuming that you’re not aiming to sell or exhibit these ‘feeling’ paintings, does it really matter if they’re not perfect?

Personally, I think It’s worth practicing your skills and honing your techniques so that your paintings satisfy you more and more on an aesthetic level. They will also gain praise from others as a consequence, but always try to hold onto your personal motivation. Why did you choose this view and not another? What did this particular colour combination stir in you? Why did you use this technique or method? Keep it real and individual, keep connected to your art and it will communicate on many more levels than its outward appearance.
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"Axis Mundi" mixed media on canvas
​There are plenty of painters out there who can reproduce reality and churn out commercially popular works, but many of them communicate absolutely nothing other than ‘here’s another one, buy me!’

We are all individuals; we all have different approaches to life.

Let’s enjoy being ourselves! 
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"Mnajdra Temple" watercolour and crayon
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"Pray Tell" watercolour and pastel
1 Comment

Drawing on your own

14/1/2015

8 Comments

 
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There’s only one you, only one me. You can’t really copy me, and I can’t copy you either, but together we can move forward by inspiring and supporting each other. We can’t really be in competition with each other if we are both following our hearts. That goes against most business models of course, but creativity can’t be contained or restricted, otherwise it withers and dies. 



Copied ideas don’t have the original inspiration or fire behind them, and although art forgers can make big bucks, most people make art because it gives them pleasure and a sense of personal achievement. Essentially we are all unique even if we ‘borrow’ every now and then. When you translate someone else’s idea through your own talents and processes, it becomes your own. That’s different to copying. 

You could never draw naturally in the same way that I do, simply because you haven’t spent the same amount of hours studying the same things that I have, how could you? You aren’t attracted to the same subjects I am, or play with the variety of unpredictable materials that I do, just for the fun of it. We are different, and so our art will differ in the same way that our fingerprints and our signatures do. 
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Epinac, 2013
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For this reason I am happy to share everything I have ever learnt or discovered. All the years that I have spent teaching and encouraging others to discover the joys of drawing have probably helped me as much as my students. Trying to describe the process of drawing in words has clarified and distilled it for me. It has also shown me the simplest ways to teach drawing to anyone who wants to learn. 
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Seascape
8 Comments

Drawing with Help

5/1/2015

5 Comments

 
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For many years, it was traditional to study under ‘master’ artists to improve technique and learn basic knowledge. An apprentice would study for years, helping to mix paint and prepare canvasses before being allowed to paint in the style of his Master. There was no such thing as individual expression or interpretation until he (and it usually was a 'he') was able to start up a studio of his own. Even then, art was commissioned by the Church and the upper classes, and the subject matter and style were dictated.

It's very different today - everyone can paint and draw whatever they like and everything they make can be called 'art'. Those who wish to study techniques (not everyone does) can easily find everything they need on the internet, usually for free.
 
Welcome to more drawing blogs for 2015! I thought I had exhausted the subject and was going to turn to my thoughts on creativity in general, but I really do think that being able to draw can be a powerful springboard into all forms of self-expression. There is something very connecting and connected about being able to study something that is outside you and then recreate it in a different form. We are creations ourselves and creativity amd innovation is what makes us so successful (and sometimes dangerous) as humans. 


Channelling Nature's insatiable urge to grow and flourish into creative pursuits instead of trying to ignore it, or -even worse - using it to invent new ways to hurt ourselves or each other, can only be a good thing.
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Perhaps it’s too easy. There are endless books, YouTube films, DVD’s and online courses about art; some are really helpful, others not at all. The temptation is to read or watch the demonstrations and step-by-steps and not actually DO them. There’s no-one there to guide us by saying ‘just look again at that shape, that curve, that form’. 

We try to be our own tutor and our own student too, and it can be hard inspiring ourselves and keeping ourselves going. It's difficult to even notice your own mistakes and shortcomings, let alone what to DO about them! Bit like life, really......

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 I will be forever grateful for my own college tutors and for every artist I have had the pleasure of working with. I think it’s always a good idea to join a group and/or take classes or workshops to keep you inspired and moving forward. There's nothing wrong at all with being 'self taught', but we all learn and grow by looking at other artist's work that we admire, and learning from their experience and knowledge. 
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Creativity and inspiration are like lighting candles – once you have lit your own you can spread the light far and wide by lighting others. If you keep it to yourself you’ll have no-one to relight your flame if you lose your way!

Here's to a CREATIVE 2015!
5 Comments

Drawing Fifty Shades of Grey Nudes

11/11/2014

0 Comments

 
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 I wonder what they’re thinking? What are their stories? So many questions run through my head while I am drawing people, and I think that the pictures capture my thoughts as I work. My impressions are part of the end product. 
Underpinning all the ‘action’ paintings and sketches that I love to do so much is a life-long fascination with people. I always have a sketch book with me, but even when I am not drawing I am watching. There’s something about the way people behave and interact, the way they move or stand. They way they walk that tells you so much about their character. The way they influence the space around them, and the way they fit into the world. 
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The only way I can paint or draw really quickly and accurately at live events is to have complete confidence in my knowledge of the human form and how it moves. My years of studying in life classes have given me a solid feeling for anatomy and a connection to the way we humans fill space. I love working with models, male and female. Human beings are all beautiful, miraculous and unique. It’s a privilege to be able to spend time studying someone’s unique body shape and simply be allowed to stare at them without embarrassment or misinterpretation.
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For the last year or so I have been working on a collection of drawings and paintings called ‘Fifty Shades of Grey Nudes’. To see the works so far please visit my Fifty Shades of Grey Nudes site.           Here are some of the latest works, which have not been added to the website yet. I would like to exhibit them to coincide with the premier of the film in Malta, but we’ll see what happens.  
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Drawing from a Different Place

21/7/2014

2 Comments

 
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I wonder if perhaps because mark-making is such a primal human urge we expect drawing to be ‘easy’ somehow; that it should not demand practice or hard work. Most people really wish that they could draw, but are convinced that they are not ‘gifted’ because they were probably told as children that their attempts at drawing were not good enough (good enough for WHAT? They are expressions, not competitions). Children who find drawing easy seem to be those who naturally see abstract shapes and how they fit together in space. It is more a gift of perception or observation than of drawing, really.

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berries
It is a gift that can be taught quite simply though, and the vast majority of people can learn to see in this deeper way. The repercussions of this can be far-reaching, as it tends to stimulate the right brain and therefore brings creativity and inventiveness into all other areas of life too. 
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car dump
 “Drawing will make you a better person – not morally, necessarily, but it makes you think. It will help you see the hidden patterns all around you, and make you a discriminating lover of landscapes, faces and mundane objects. It becomes an education, which changes your brain as much as learning to play the piano or to dance. It is about striving to become more fully human”  Andrew Marr in ‘A Short Book About Drawing’
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John, sleeping
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kittens
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John, still sleeping
You can use the practice of drawing as a form of productive meditation, time for yourself, an interesting way of looking at the world differently and an absorbing search for lines and shapes to describe what you see. It can also be a new way of connecting to your surroundings, helping you to see things that you had never noticed before. The end result is less important than how much you learn, how much you see and how deeply you become absorbed. This alone can be the greatest source of joy, and as you continue the actual drawings will improve, with flashes of insight and leaps of ability.
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Dog walker
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Maltese farmhouse
I often think that the world would be a much more peaceful and pleasant place if only everyone was helped to draw to the best of their ability; we would all ‘see’, feel and experience life in a much less superficial way.
2 Comments

Drawing and Sketching

2/2/2014

3 Comments

 
The differences between ‘drawing’ and ‘painting’ are not always clear cut. Drawings are generally personal, intimate things, often made quickly to capture a fleeting moment in time. Paintings often take more time to create, and are more social in that they are usually hung on walls to be seen. There are as many permutations of this as there are artists though. Many great artists, such as Degas, drew with colour, using pastels, which are sticks of pure pigment.

Generally though, drawings are monochrome lines, made with graphite, ink or charcoal. It is very easy to find artist’s sketches and drawings on the internet, and you can actually see where a pen was pushed harder, a pencil used sensitively or boldly, a stick of chalk dragged sideways. Looking at an artist’s sketches can give an insight into their personality and private thoughts which are not so obvious in their finished paintings.

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Dance workshop - soft pastel
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Nude, conte crayon and watercolour
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Dance performance, ink and wash
Without the colour of a painting, a jumble of lines is all we have to make sense of a drawn image. We have to work a little harder to do this, and therefore a drawing can often be more engaging than a painting. We can see a direct connection to the artist and how he moved his hand to produce each line, how he represented texture, light, perspective, time, mass and even his feelings. If you are lucky enough to flick through the pages of an artist’s sketchbook, it’s like a direct insight into their soul. What caught their eye? What was worth the drawing time? Where were they? What mood were they in? 

PictureA lifetime in sketchbooks....
Sketchbooks are like visual diaries and I have one with me at all times, a habit instilled in me at college years ago. I can look back over almost 40 years of sketches and I know instantly where I was and what was going on in my life at the time. The drawings vary in quality and in method – some were done as visual notes, some are intense studies and in others I have used whatever came to hand to draw with. I rarely use my sketches as the basis for other works, although many people do. I draw to keep myself connected - to the world around me, to my hand/eye coordination and to the ideas and inspirations which might otherwise be forgotten. I see them as a separate activity to painting really, although of course the two feed into each other. Best of all is that these diaries are completely private; nobody else can really know or feel as much as I do about each drawing. 


I would encourage everyone to keep a sketchbook. All you need is a book of plain paper which will fit into your bag or pocket, even if you think you can’t draw ‘well enough’...... and simply doodle, scribble, sketch, copy; USE it as often as possible. Keep notes of your ideas and thoughts in it too. You don’t need to show it to anyone and so it need never be judged. Keep it to get your lines flowing and your eyes seeing.

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    Jeni Caruana

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    ​I love to paint - and draw - and help others to discover their creative side too.....

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  • Portfolio
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