Simon's Blog

As the one or two followers may be aware over the past few weeks I have been using Nicole Kidman’s image as an academic exercise to try and explore portrait further. On the whole it has been a bit of a failure apart from the fact I have learnt a great deal so may be it hasn’t after all (I. Managed to contradict myself in the same sentence – something of a record even for me!)

Anyway, Ms Kidman. I thought I would give it one final go and use a version of the camera obscurer technique probably used by artist such as Vermeer. Only I don’t have such a machine or couldn’t be arsed to build one. So what I ended up doing was drawing over the photograph to leave an impression on the page below which worked really well. However, once I started to work on the drawing I found the whole exercise pointless – almost like painting by numbers. In the end I gave up trying to make a realistic copy and just let go with the oils pastels. I think the result is very interesting. But it did start me asking why I want to draw?

Now this is a very interesting question for me. I can make very professional?? Photographs so making interesting image isn’t the reason why I do it. I guess, in part, it is the challenge but this doesn’t really answer the question. In the end I really do believe it is something deeper than this – I just need to do it. The genie is out of the bottle and I can’t help myself indeed it has become such an obsession that I’m loosing interest in photography. I have no idea whether this will last but at the moment the idea of making a photograph is becoming more and more boring. Strange how life works out.

Sent from my iPad