The start of the new school year is my busiest time of year as all of the businesses I run involve working with schools in one way or another. It’s been a frantic fortnight of reconnecting with teachers and school leadership teams, restarting with some of the students I tutor and fitting everything into a schedule that will work for the year and give me time to work on the IOMNJ and other art projects. As a result, I haven’t had much time for actually doing any art or exploring the Manx countryside (and I’m feeling all the worse for it!). I’m therefore very thankful to have been sent lots of lovely artwork to add to the IOMNJ map and have found a wonderful article on pigments, which you may be interested to read. More details on both in this week’s blog post.
I’ve added the above image to the map. It’s one of my preliminary drawings for the Block Eary painting that’s already on there, but I realised it could be useful for children and adults who are learning about the artistic process to see different versions of the same scene and it shows how even the same artist can go about things very differently by choosing different a medium to work with.
Emma Ashford (@ManxMoods) has been busy and sent in two more of her beautiful gouache paintings. They are so cheerful and were a great mood-lifter when I received them on a rainy day!
Yn Garraghtan yn Reagh Deur, The Garden of the Red Door in Manx, is a wonderful reminder of the gorgeous summer we’ve just had and a lovely addition to the Port Erin artworks, already on the map.
Emma Ashford alerted me to this painting of Silverdale by Dave Gibson, an artist who lives and works in Stockport, UK. I contacted him and he very kindly gave his permission for me to add a photo of this fabulous painting to the IOMNJ map.
I always love reading about pigments used in art, so I was delighted to stumble across an article in Emergence Magazine called Museum of Color by Stephanie Krzywonos. It’s not the easiest of reads in places as it describes some terrible behaviour by humans, but it is an extremely interesting account of the history of some familiar and less well-known pigments. It’s really opened my eyes to the meaning behind some of the pigment names and I’ll think of them very differently now. I’m not sure I can use Mummy Brown again, even if it is made synthetically now!
Sorry for the short post, but the article above should keep you occupied! I’ll try to get back to some more art and exploring soon!
Have a good fortnight!
Emma
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