I generally make marks on something every day, but I'm really TRYING to do it purposefully in one single journal at a time. I also have super ADHD, which means I pretty much never go up to my actual studio and usually only use what's out on my desk, because out-of-sight-out-of-mind.
Dmitry Shostakovich (1906–1975)
Shostakovich’s contemporaries do not recall seeing him working, at least not in the traditional sense. The Russian composer was able to conceptualize a new work entirely in his head, and then write it down with extreme rapidity—if uninterrupted, he could average twenty or thirty pages of score a day, making virtually no corrections as he went.
But this feat was apparently preceded by hours or days of mental composition—during which he “appeared to be a man of great inner tensions,” the musicologist Alexei Ikonnikov observed, “with his continually moving, ‘speaking’ hands, which were never at rest.”
Shostakovich himself was afraid that perhaps he worked too fast. “I worry about the lightning speed with which I compose,” he confessed in a letter to a friend. Undoubtedly this is bad. One shouldn’t compose as quickly as I do. Composition is a serious process, and in the words of a ballerina friend of mine, “You can’t keep going at a gallop.” I compose with diabolical speed and can’t stop myself.… It is exhausting, rather unpleasant, and at the end of the day you lack any confidence in the result. But I can’t rid myself of the bad habit.
- From Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey
#dailyrituals #inktober #shostakovich @masoncurrey
I'm hoping to finish off this children's book this year. It's a lot of work. Too many illustrations - so many the printing cost will jump, so I might have to find a publisher for this one, rather than self-publish. This is acrylic on paper.
Done mostly with oil bar, this is more akin to a sketch than a painting. It's great when you can get loose with the process and end up with something that looks like a finished work.
Sometimes the worst days just get us ready for the best days.....don’t stay in the bad weather too long. It’s just a storm that comes and goes with time. #Embracingnightmares
I don't usually post my instagram & twitter art here, but why not? I'm so excited that it's finally October! I made this quick little doodle yesterday for the first day of October. Also, I have photoshop but I'm using Krita more and more. Krita has a more intuitive feel and I'm able to make quicker sketches with it.
Lockdown makes some of us forget what good times were like before the coronavirus reared it's nasty little head, so in response we dig down into our brains for times that really mattered.
