what’s going on in your visual life? thread for ilxors who like to paint, draw, build, shape, combine, subtract, deface, obliterate etc

it seems like there are enough people that maybe there should be a thread for this idk

lately i’ve been trying to get back into drawing and painting “just for the process” although i still find myself asking why am i even doing this.
i’m specifically trying to make stuff that isn’t concerned with being capital-A Art for the time being, or even “any good”. because last time i took this up i was getting very caught up in "meaning control", in big ideas and the semiotics of materials and gestures, to the point that i was just immediately shooting down every possibility without giving anything a chance.

i’ve been collecting kids’ books which are illustrated by Diane deGroat, they’re very banal but delicate and attractive drawings with a ton of narrative information, and I think what I like about them is they’re not trying to impress me for how involved they actually are. They have an unassuming naturalism, let’s say. I can’t really draw like her, and i’m struggling to achieve the finer details on a sketchbook scale. maybe i need finer pens, idk- But i’ve tried to do some drawings that are sort of in that style where the kids are visibly queer or gender non conforming.

i got these ‘watercolor pencils’ as a present recently, and they’re really great. i can spend hours building up a really controlled drawing, layering colors obsessively… and then i get to go in and make the whole thing sopping wet and risk ruining everything in a few minutes. it’s like dominoes, where you’re just waiting for the gleeful moment where you get to knock it over

and the other thing i’ve been doing is looking for silly and fun craft projects i can make with found materials from the park

hbu?

hi! love this thread, bookmarked of course

:D

i recently was working on a large acrylic “mural” on the wall in my back basement stairs area. we have/had a basement diy venue and i wanted to christen it with a big painting which fit the visual theme of the flyers i’d make for the shows here. unfortunately my landlord is a libertarian piece of shit and my lease has just been terminated (the longest, saddest story - tenant rights in Missouri are virtually non-existent). so today i’m covering it up with white latex paint so that i don’t have to look at the mural and be reminded of it all, anymore. it’s a sad day.

it’ll be a minute til i can set up a working space in my new apartment, so in the meantime i’ve just been going to the park and drawing a lot, occasionally adding oil pastels. and after a long time off, i’m resuming regular figure drawing workshops next saturday, very exciting for that.

deflator, i’m cool with any answer to this, but do you envision people sharing stuff on this thread? typically over the last 15 years or so i’ve been posting a lot of my output on this recently retitled thread: zach's old animations and new visual art, updated every 25 to 60 days

especially when i’m on a roll, i tend to make a lot of things and post a lot, but i don’t want to overwhelm this thread with it. ideally i wish there were 50 people on this thread who were regularly making things and sharing them, so that my own things could just join the stream. i love so much to see what people are working on, whether it’s people just getting into things or highly skilled lifelong badasses. but for now i will probably hold off until lots of other people are sharing. i tend to accidentally crowd out people with my own enthusiasm, sometimes, and it’s something i’m trying to work on.

ugh, so sorry to hear about your mural and space, z :(
of course feel free to share stuff here as often as you’re inclined, or on your own thread or both!

i may shy away from sharing work, or do so only selectively, but plz don’t let that stop you!!

I am bad at visual art but I'm trying to doodle more just as an outlet for creativity, I guess specifically an outlet that I can allow myself to be bad at (I write and do music stuff but I get paralysed by wanting to be good or interesting at those forms). I also decided to buy myself a mini lino printing kit, because being rubbish at controlling a pencil means I'll *definitely* be great at controlling carving utensils, right?

thank deflator! it’ll be ok. part of the nice thing about working on that corner/stairs spot is i always knew it would be temporary, which really helped to lower the stakes and make it easier to do big moves without fear of “messing up”. next one i make will be better :)

xp emil.y have you ever tried collages?

Only for things like tape covers back in the day when I used to make compilation tapes for people, very occasionally since then. I have thought about getting back into it but there's way less free printed material around these days, I feel like you have to actively seek it out now.

reason i mention it is that there’s a fun way you can use collages in more of a late-life matisse fashion, with the materials being little pieces of paper that you watercolor/gouache with whatever color you like (or just buy pre-colored sheets of paper from a store and save time) - then you make the collages by cutting out whatever shapes you want with whatever colors you want. it comes out very different than something you’d make using newspaper or magazines, printed material, etc - but it’s a way to make really cool compositions without having to rely so much on drawing/technical ability

Every so often I fetch out all my stuff and paw over it all, frustrates me that i'm not churning out more work. I don't help myself by starting pieces that are too large and end up unfinished. I need to downsize going forward.

So lately a lot of doodles and pen sketches for me whilst in office, but if I do paint it will be acrylic. I tried oils but couldn't get the hang of them at all. I enjoy mixing media though, paints, coloured pencils, crayons, markers, whatever I have.

i really can’t doodle, it’s probably clear enough from my first post that i’m one of those people who can’t seem to work entirely intuitively
i have (or had) the same problem with making music.

in high school these kids a couple of years below me one day asked to see all my class notebooks… because they assumed there would be lots of imaginative doodles in the margins. there was not a one! i always seem to create expectations that i can’t live up to.

lino printing is so brave, emily. that rules :D

for collage material, well, i once had a job in a photocopy store, like a mom & pop kinko’s. i used to put all kinds of objects and materials on the copy machine. some of it was just textural shit, like crumpled up tinfoil. using those xeroxes as collage elements = a kind of visual equivalent of sampling yourself i guess

I recently re-bought How To Draw Comics The Marvel Way (the book, not the sweet video version) with the intention of drawing a comic about one of my dogs (already have several story ideas), but I really am just focusing on basics at the moment because I haven’t really drawn in quite a long time (isometric cube doodles and such aside)

I’ve been working on a series of collages for eight years or so, sometimes with large periods of inactivity. Collage is great because it’s not messy and I can work on it anywhere. They’re abstract for the most part. Eventually I would like to do versions of them as paintings.

I met my wife while we were both working on our master’s in studio arts with an emphasis in sculpture. There’s a life-sized bronze of myself cast from a mold in the living room. The kids call him “Bronze Daddy” and dress him in drag.

I like the idea of this thread! Will try to figure out pictures soon.

I used to do weekly life drawing classes for over ten years, then we moved cities and there weren't any good or convenient classes, and family got in the way, for the best part of six years. There was also a free untutored portraits class where we'd take turns to pose for 15 minutes, that went online during covid and stayed there so I've carried on been doing that, and last year not one but two life drawing classes started near me - but all three of them are on the same day! I've also started trying to oil paint in earnest after a few false starts (with oils and acrylic) over the years. It's hard! I'll post some pics later too.

There’s a life-sized bronze of myself cast from a mold in the living room. The kids call him “Bronze Daddy” and dress him in drag.

this is amazing, pics please!

Ledge I was browsing ILX yesterday and saw some of your old work, when you were first getting started! Would love to see where you’re at now, particularly with the oil

reason i mention it is that there’s a fun way you can use collages in more of a late-life matisse fashion, with the materials being little pieces of paper that you watercolor/gouache with whatever color you like (or just buy pre-colored sheets of paper from a store and save time) - then you make the collages by cutting out whatever shapes you want with whatever colors you want. it comes out very different than something you’d make using newspaper or magazines, printed material, etc - but it’s a way to make really cool compositions without having to rely so much on drawing/technical ability

― z_tbd

for collage material, well, i once had a job in a photocopy store, like a mom & pop kinko’s. i used to put all kinds of objects and materials on the copy machine. some of it was just textural shit, like crumpled up tinfoil. using those xeroxes as collage elements = a kind of visual equivalent of sampling yourself i guess

― but some albums are more equalized than others (Deflatormouse)

These are great ideas, and I might well use them at some point, thank you.

The lino print kit is very much a mini model for home crafts and I am going to be terrible at it, but I'm hoping it will still be fun. Allowing myself to be bad at things without punishing myself for it is a skill I am still learning.

Also omg @ 'Bronze Daddy', I also demand pics

Deflatormouse, your posts itt have very much made me interested in getting into collaging, I have done the kind of stuff like pasting pictures of airstream campers onto pictures of outer space etc, but for whatever reason going more abstract hadn’t crossed my mind.

Someone I work with bought a huge sheet of… whatever refrigerator magnets are made of? For the purpose of converting their sticker collection into refrigerator magnets. I think it’s a cool idea.

Also omg @ 'Bronze Daddy', I also demand pics

― emil.y, Saturday, March 8, 2025 10:18 AM (twenty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i remember seeing the pics in another thread, maybe one about record storage??

oh duh z i meant to say your posts inspired me re collage as well! sorry, was stoned last night.

xp

That’s right, he’s sitting in front of my record shelves. Will post pics when I get back home in a couple of days. I’ve escaped to a beach house alone, abandoning my loving family for a weekend of making art, listening to good music and eating bad food.

xp oh no worries brimstead, truly! i think it’s so cool that you’re getting inspired!

cow_art - did you figure out how to post images? it’s way more complicated than it should be, but if you’re still looking for a way, i can show/tell you about a method involving imgur (no account necessary) that will take you about 15 seconds to use, once you get the hang of it

Also omg @ 'Bronze Daddy', I also demand pics

― emil.y, Saturday, 8 March 2025 16:18 (four hours ago) link

^^^

hell yeah, z - your work has a real sprit of adventure and investigation that’s contagious (and i hope more and more of it rubs off on me)

I’ve been working on a series of collages for eight years or so, sometimes with large periods of inactivity.

i am going to assume these "abstracts” are arranged into Cow print patterns until i see evidence to the contrary

I recently re-bought How To Draw Comics The Marvel Way (the book, not the sweet video version) with the intention of drawing a comic about one of my dogs (already have several story ideas)

omg i love this, please share one or more story ideas

he lino print kit is very much a mini model for home crafts and I am going to be terrible at it, but I'm hoping it will still be fun. Allowing myself to be bad at things without punishing myself for it is a skill I am still learning.

awesome, this is 100% what i’m doing here rn. i have purchased air dry clay! i have purchased various kits for little kids (i *wish* i could make stuff that looks like a 6 yr old did it), my whole thing right now is about taking the pressure off so i don’t prematurely shut myself down. that’s *so hard*!!! completely relate to this

lino print is one of the most intimidating media to me for sure!

I can figure out the pic posting when I get back to a desktop. Too busy making art right now!

premise is basically: howard the dog runs out the front door of my apartment one day and goes down endless hallways, crosses a liminal backrooms realm into a parallel doggie world where he initially makes friends with old money casino lounge lizard dogs but soon becomes best friends with a sheepdog who comes from old money but introduces him to radical politics. I have the idea of Howard progressing through trade school/college and the comic getting really philosophical like Calvin and Hobbes or something. My two other dogs would make brief appearances periodically in a kind of “Statler and Walford/dishwashers in The Kingdom” chorus type role.

but just from getting back into drawing, drawing a whole page seems like an insane amount of effort right now, let alone an entire story

it wouldn’t be like, human type content just with dogs, they would still be talking about eating fish heads and sniffing asses and stuff

OK, I hesitated about posting this here, almost didnt do so, 'cause I don't paint or draw or sketch or sculpt; all I've done are take photos and set them to music - often Beethoven works. But then I saw the word "collage" (as well as "combine"), and reasoned that my little videos are basically montages, and montages are basically collages that utilize time rather than space, so figured that I'd post a single one, and if nobody likes it, they can either ignore it, or view and and then make nasty comments. As I've said to everybody I've showed these videos to, I give 90% of the creative credit to Beethoven, or Django Reinhardt, or the Beatles, or Cecil Taylor, Louis Armstrong, or whichever musician whose music seemed most appropriate to accompany my chpsen assortment of visuals

Anyways, so here is "Circulation", watch it, and enjoy it, or neither

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVLsxeKT9tA

Was there a grimy condom package in there?!?

That was great!

I really enjoyed that!

I don’t draw/create in these ways, but love that this thread exists, and looo forward to seeing how it develops.

thank you for sharing myonga! something i love about projects like yours is how they can open up your eyes to noticing things in daily life, noticing things that are circles or things that are almost circles. it adds a meaningful layer to your daily existence in which you’re actively seeking, heightened awareness of your environment, relating the outer world to your inner expressive self.

awesome Myonga! i love how when you scale everything together like that it emphasizes certain aspects, like their conceits/convexity/relative shininess, etc

concavity not conceits

Ledge I was browsing ILX yesterday and saw some of your old work, when you were first getting started! Would love to see where you’re at now, particularly with the oil

Well I'm still very much wedded to figurative realism, which can be a bit limiting, it would be nice to be more confident drawing from imagination, or to get more wildly expressive - as you clearly can. But I'm mostly happily plugging away at portraits and life drawing. Here's some recent ones:

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/54374843587_780ceca0b5_z.jpg

Could've worked a bit more on the feet there...

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/54375957173_c0ede77782_z.jpg

I think I've developed a moderately expressive style with pen that I'm pretty happy with.

As for painting it's early days (still!), been doing simple exercises, still lives, a few portraits - some have gone well, some haven't. It's weird, I'm confident at drawing and with colour mixing, but when it comes to putting paint onto the canvas it often just seems to fall apart somehow. This small and quick one for a friend's kid's birthday went ok at the second attempt:

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/54376110775_f72e953432_z.jpg

sorry for huge pics.

OK, I hesitated about posting this here, almost didnt do so, 'cause I don't paint or draw or sketch or sculpt;

sorry, i know i neglected to make the thread title sufficiently open-ended- only because that might have taken me all day!!
if you are making something and want to talk about it or share it here, please feel welcome.

your montage actually made me laugh! i don’t know why but it tickled me.
i wonder what the mylar balloon originally said under “birthday”

it would be nice to be more confident drawing from imagination, or to get more wildly expressive - as you clearly can

i think when i was a kid, i was like the guy in Close Encounters- i would become completely overtaken by an image, as though possessed by it. And i’d just feel the overwhelming urge to duplicate it, over and over again sometimes. And then being ’the kid who draws’ invites those expectations, of doing so imaginatively, or expressively, or in a novel way etc. I wonder if that kind of creativity is actually unnecessary at times, if subjectivity might be enough.

old money casino lounge lizard dogs

A+

I had a small revelation recently regarding my difficulty with painting. Basically since taking drawing up again in earnest in my 30s it's always been a social thing. I started off doing a course on urban sketching, some of us carried on meeting up after the class, we started a meetup group and at one point it was the largest drawing meetup group in London, with over 10,000 members! (Which somewhat exaggerates its actual popularity, people just join meetup groups speculatively and never leave.) Then I took up life drawing and found a great group who always went to the pub afterwards, and that branched out into the portraits club which met in a pub. So even when though the drawing might not always have gone well there was an incentive to keep going, to meet friends and new people and be a part of that community. With painting I've done the odd short course but now I'm doing it entirely on my own. There's no social aspect, no other incentive to keep going, loads of opportunity for self criticism and none for group support / advice / encouragement.

Thanks for the kind remarks, all...

i wonder what the mylar balloon originally said under “birthday”

It was "...Mother's Day!" when I originally found it lying abandoned, I changed it to "birthday!" to send a photo greeting to my sister, and then ended up keeping the balloon, for sending a few similar messages to others over the next year.

And yes, Cow_Art, that is indeed a sealed green condom package, at 0:34 (just spotted lying on the ground)

https://i.ibb.co/gLYhQ4Vy/pb.jpg

Oh that's really nice!!! I love watercolor.

yeah nice one deflator! snow/ice seems like a very handy subject matter for watercolor, too. i really get into stuff like the light blue rectangle background

I'm trying to make a short clip with a video synthesis app I ran across every night - I've averaged ~1.5 Instagram posts per year since it came out but I'm on like a six night streak now

https://www.instagram.com/p/DG-UCH4O043/

not my best but here is a gouache i did at a cabin the other day

https://i.imgur.com/kBKyyKk.jpeg

https://i.ibb.co/HLPV0fds/Collage-2.jpg

https://i.ibb.co/ZR4CY1wJ/Collage-3.jpg

https://i.ibb.co/2YsVRH56/Collages.jpg

My goal is to make 99 collages and then pick my favorite ones and paint them. Here's a photo of some of them hung up at our old place for a sense of scale. 95% of the imagery is from old National Geographics, cut up and glued down with an Uhu glue stick.

I haven't counted them in a while, but I'm probably getting close to 50. I've been working on them since 2017. I started doing collage stuff because it's easy to do at home, nontoxic, and I thought I could make a bunch of them really fast. Turns out I work slow no matter what. Sometimes I start building up imagery and most of it gets covered up later.

https://i.ibb.co/5WyrHwjg/Collage-1.jpg

Last one for now. "Sitting On A Pile Of Gold". It's hard not to title everything after songs.

What kind of prints are they?

― Cow_Art, Wednesday, April 9, 2025 8:55 PM (twenty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Just the big inkjet we have at work, on some heavy cardstock.

I like that you're making a series, btw. I have 40 or so other color timelines and most are pretty boring, but I enjoy comparing the results of the process to each other.

Hey dan, that’s beautiful.
I have a friend whose work uses generative modeling to mimic biological processes, influenced by the “morphogenetic” art of Andy Lomas, deskreptiv and others. He says that if he tried to model the form without understanding the process that gives rise to it, it would never be as beautiful as the natural world (he has done plants and corals). I think this is a liminal space between art and research that’s very exciting. for one thing, it proposes a potential alternative to “traditional art”.
There’s a question in there somewhere. I guess I’m wondering if you likewise use algorithms to make something more beautiful than you could design, because I also find it more beautiful than legible. or is there a key, or some literacy requirement?

95% of the imagery is from old National Geographics, cut up and glued down with an Uhu glue stick.

That's great, assumed the first 2 were huge until I saw the third pic. these designs will lend themselves very well to large scale imo if that's what you have in mind for the eventual paintings!

Hey dan, that’s beautiful.
I have a friend whose work uses generative modeling to mimic biological processes, influenced by the “morphogenetic” art of Andy Lomas, deskreptiv and others. He says that if he tried to model the form without understanding the process that gives rise to it, it would never be as beautiful as the natural world (he has done plants and corals). I think this is a liminal space between art and research that’s very exciting. for one thing, it proposes a potential alternative to “traditional art”.
There’s a question in there somewhere. I guess I’m wondering if you likewise use algorithms to make something more beautiful than you could design, because I also find it more beautiful than legible. or is there a key, or some literacy requirement?

― doe on a hill (Deflatormouse), Wednesday, April 9, 2025 11:32 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Thank you. Your friend's work sounds interesting and thanks for sharing Lomas and deskreptiv—I find I am surprisingly out of touch with contemporary work since I started teaching!

My process has evolved in this series from simple 1:1 transfer of metadata into writing algorithms to respond to new forms in the data… hope that makes sense. For example, initially the data I was working with was just six numbers in a string, so that directly translates to a hex color (https://www.shutterstock.com/blog/how-hex-colors-work). Then I started encountering the same type of data that was written a different way: more numbers, the addition of letters and special characters like _underscores_, etc, so I had to figure out how to wrangle those into a form I could use. It started as simple math but then I moved to using scripts to do it faster than I could in my head. To actually get around to answering your question, I don't know if it's making something more beautiful than I could design, but I definitely get different results with different algorithmic methods and some look better than others.

As for literacy, I have made some that feature text interpretations of some aspects of the publication I'm visualizing. Here's one of those and it also uses three different algorithmic processes to respond to different data forms.

https://i.imgur.com/YqmlXm1.jpeg

I like those, it's a great idea and and cool end result.

Last night I was portrait drawing for money. A fundraising for cubs, low key and low money, 50p-£1 for a five minute portrait. I sat there for ten minutes with no takers then suddenly it was non stop for the next 90 minutes. I've done loads of 15 minute portraits, I'm ok with ten and I have done that live once before, five is something else and drawing kids can be a challenge, they can't always sit still (though most of them did) and they have different proportions, if you're not careful you can make them look too grown up. In theory it was low pressure but it felt pretty intense, by the end my head was buzzing. All the drawings turned out pretty well though!

maps: https://imgur.com/a/xFt3INO

Oooh, these are ace. The inverted topography one gave me (enjoyable) vertigo, and I laughed out loud at the optimising trick or treat map.

i’m putting on a wordless experimental/diy play tonight called doctor magic, and it involves the amputation of this arm (three times actually, lol). acrylic and gouache on some sort of bendable/posable mesh covered children’s arm a friend loaned to me

https://i.imgur.com/jmqDgrG.jpeg

https://i.imgur.com/psklLRS.jpeg

How did Doctor Magic go??

Wow violent!
I love how that arm is all "to hell with local color"

The optimising trick or treat map (which i adore) reminded me of the intro to Everything Sings where they said the jack o lantern map might prove useful to vadals if only it didn't require so much planning.

Dan, thank you and sorry for asking so many dumb questions. That is also a lovely image.

*vandals

Trick or treat is an inner warzone between spontaneity and efficiency

xp lavator

let’s just say…the arm was successfully amputated…three times *doctor magic music plays*

https://i.imgur.com/8zttIRL.png

https://i.ibb.co/hJ5Qf4hY/Joseph-Cowart-A-New-World.jpg

https://i.ibb.co/N6KSzGCr/Joseph-Cowart-Polyps-Under-Scrutiny.jpg

more like cow heart, amirite

yeah, love these cow art!

same!

Thanks! That last one is called “Polyps Under Scrutiny.”

the one with the vertical yellow stripes reminds me of a painting by Maria Helena Vieira da Silva

https://i.imgur.com/2zWlu6x.jpeg

been meaning to update for a while but it takes too long.
the short version is, i’ve resisted the urge to start making conceptual art again and this is what i’ve been doing instead

https://i.ibb.co/QjC8yypH/image.jpg

Breeding Trump-haired mole rats?

‘fraid so, soon i’ll have an army

https://i.ibb.co/wN9dV9PK/Joseph-Cowart-Transnmission.jpg

ooh

love that

showing these in a few days at a gallery opening but mainly as an excuse to improvise snare drum solos under a blanket for 20 minutes

https://i.imgur.com/CL41G7I.jpeg

https://robertadamgilmour.blogspot.com/2026/01/another-forest.html
First drawing I've finished in 8 years, too bloody long

I love that

Whoaaa... is that all done in pen?

Yes, thankyou

very cool, nice tonal variation and sense of depth.

i’m sorry, i keep trying to view it but can’t! i know it’s age restricted so i have to sign into my blogspot account to see it, but even then, i’ve been unable to sign-in for some reason.

would you mind posting it with imgbb or another free upload service?

it’s because i’m 16 years old, isn’t it

https://cara.app/post/5f675cf8-ed8d-40a5-8873-b91d73f37524

Wow, that’s great! How large is it?!

Regular A4

Daaaaang

nice, reminds me of miura

Thankyou all

I spent all day packing up work for my first solo show. It's stressful!

The show is at the University of South Dakota library from the end of this month thru May, if you happen to be in Vermillion.

post some pics!

Pics but it’s gonna happen