Making your art work

Recently I was lent the book "Making your art work” by Ann Gadd. The author describes it as; “A guide to making a living from art in South Africa” and, because I seem to be barely scraping a living from art in South Africa, I pounced on it eagerly.

Its a kind of how-to book with some elements of self-help mixed in and, surprisingly, has proved to be amusing, thought-provoking and instructive.

Her observations of how artists think and work (or sometimes don’t!), are incisive yet sympathetic and, encouraged by her understanding of the creative spirit, I decided to commit to the exercises recommended in the book.

The first one I did was to design a personal logo. I won’t go into the thought processes behind this exercise (get the book) but what I had to do was identify aspects in my life on which I needed to work, and then do little drawings to depict each aspect.

                                               Next I simplified these drawings even further

…then turned them into a logo, which has personal significance…

                                                   …and of course I had to go overboard!

Now this logo is on my computer desktop, and will soon be stuck up all over my house and studio. It remains to be seen whether it has any potency as a motivational device, but at least  I had fun doing it.