Nicole Cadet Fantasy Art

From Part Time Painter

On being creatively diverse...

The last few months have been fairly quiet on the art front. I haven't disappeared completely, but the painting has definitely been on the back burner as I work 9-15hour days in the day job. But despite of a lack of interest in painting (i.e. I'm not painting every spare minute), I've discovered some new creative outlets that are helping to re-invigorate my love of art.

Each week I trundle off to my SCA - Society for Creative Anachronism meetings (a medieval recreation group) , where we learn about life in the past. We explore how people lived during the medieval to 1600 AD time period, learning about weaponry and fighting, clothing, arts, sciences, history and a host of related skills. One of the skills I have been learning is clothes making (we don't do costuming - we make clothes). Now I am a little domestically challenged - probably more from laziness than any real lack of co-ordination, but medieval tailoring can be as simple or as complex as you make it.

So what can you learn from costume/ garb/ clothes making and how does this help the art?

• You have a greater understanding of costumes so when you go to paint or sketch a costume, because you know how it is constructed, you can work out how it's going to sit, look and feel. It also makes you obsess over historical paintings, looking at seams, linings and blackwork!
  
• You increase your dexterity. Hand-sewing and embroidery require precision, repetition and patience.
  
• You learn about patterns and motifs - not just costume patterns, but embroidery patterns, fabric patterns, printing blocks, culture and time period specific motifs, colour symbology and a great range of visual references that you can incorporate into your art
• Costumes can be used for reference shoots (maybe you can claim them as business expenses)
• Hand sewing/ embroidery/ knitting can be very soothing tasks (when you're not having to unpick!) So you have an added bonus of relaxation
• Sewing groups can give you social opportunities. It's fun to sit with a group of ladies (and men on occasion) and chat about anything and everything while being creative
  
• You get exposed to some magnificent artwork as you go trawling through reference sites on particular time periods and clothing pieces
• You learn about natural dyes and pigments that can also be used for painting
  
• it's still using your creative muscles
• it gives you a sense of accomplishment wearing something you've created

Essentially what I am trying to say is when your time is scarce and you just don't feel like picking up a paintbrush, there are many other creative outlets that you can explore. There's no need to feel guilty because you aren't painting, rather you should be exploring as many different creative outlets as you can. Not only can it give your creativity a boost, it can also be a chance to make new friends, relax and recharge the batteries.

I think I want more four day weeks :P I had Friday off because I had some flex hours I needed to use. I did absolutely nothing that I had planned, instead, I slept in, answered some emails (damn, just remembered one I needed to do!), then bummed around until the guy mum had organised to put in an automatic garage door came. I loves it :) No more getting out in the rain! Yay!

Anyways, so Friday was a complete write off. Saturday was a long day. I had a medieval event which involved eating great food (we had a medieval picnic - everyone had parcels of food - pies, pieces of fruit, cheese, fresh bikkies), watching my friends fight in the rapier tourney, watching the 'wheel of doom' tourney (heavy fighters randomly had weapons chosen by spinning a wheel ... lots of fun with spear and two handed axe vs Great shield and really small short swords). I got sun burnt though... we got rained on in the morning, I froze half the day, and blinded by the sunshine in the arvo - need to make a hood or something decent for my head that will actually stay on without giving me a headache!

Sunday we had a working bee... much rooting around in boxes and cupboards (earning us official 'bitching rights' - because we've dug through the SCA hall's crap, we can now complain when people put things away incorrectly or things are broken and manky. I think some stuff had been there since the hall's creation, even got to through away bottle of stuff with a used by date of 1999... seriously icky! But I managed to get some help with the newcomers event that I'm running in July. So there will be a heavies tournament, a rapier tournament, archery games (including like a popup shooting hall), and what ever other crazy things I can think of! Someone suggested bobbing for apples, but that would be too cold in the middle of winter. I'm also taking over the Webminster duties so that I can tidy up the barony's website :) Should be fun!

But I have been working on some medieval 'stuff'... my blackworking for the collars/ sleeves of my 16th century chemise :)
 

I forgot to post these here *rolls eyes at oversight*



Erinyes - finished (well as much as I could do before the deadline)


Finally finished, over a year after I sketched the piece :) Not the colours I'd planned on using (paintbrush kind of went where it wasn't meant to go)

I have another art piece, but I'll be kind to people's downloads and post it in a few days :)

On other news...
We had a medieval festival on Saturday. Boy was my posture good in my 16th century Italian gown! I was laced and hooked in, managed to dance in it and eat in it, but carrying half your weight in fabric certainly makes you sweat :P

I've been on training these last few days. It's wonderful being out of the office. We've been learning I guess what you could call 'ethical hacking' techniques to improve security development. The practical stuff is so much more interesting than learning about the different security protocols. But it's all a necessary evil. I just wish we had internet access to the desktops at work so we could subscribe to technical blogs rather than being forced to do it in our own time.

Random linkies to interesting sites



A really cool animation of the Bayeux Tapestry - I know, really old, but still very cool!

http://illustr8.blogspot.com/ - I love his illustrations - rather abstract and photo-montage images, but I love textured images like this.

http://fantasticportfolios.com - Ellen's creative baby. If you are an artist, go be a member (says she who's still figuring out what to upload :P)

http://www.edgeworlds.com - Anneth Lagamo's sketchy site :)

http://pdphoto.org/index.php - public Domain images