Simple is Sometimes Best

Sometimes I forget how incredible a piece looks by just keeping it simple.  I find myself constantly overworking or overanalyzing my work.  There have many times that  I should have gone with my first instinct to just put the brush down and leave it be.  The piece below wasn't even anything, just a practice piece of paper to warm up my hand and to test the consistency of the ink.  This blog post is even starting to be a little overworked so I've had to tell myself to just stop typing and enjoy the simple things in life.

massive amounts of reference photographs

I take a lot of random photographs that in my mind, will one day be used for something great, but in reality 99.999% of those photos end up on my external and are forgotten.  Recently I was asked to create a project for work to produce an image that will eventually be printed on canvas and hung with the rest of my coworkers' pieces in the space we share.  I was not entirely excited about this and ended up spending less than half an hour figuring out what I was going to do.  I scanned through the massive amount of images I have collected throughout the years and found this image of raindrops running down a window.

I work in Photoshop all day long, so the prospect of working in it during my off time was not appealing.  I took the photo and tweaked some of the contrast and color to create the image below.  Overall, considering the complete lack of enthusiasm and putting no thought or effort into it, I thought the final image came out fairly good. 

I imagine that I will continue to take massive amounts of "reference photos" that will then be placed on externals to be forgotten, but I might just find a use for one or two them. Maybe?

Art and MS

            When I was first diagnosed with MS, two years ago, my biggest fear was that my perspective on art would change.  I was worried that I would be unable to devout much of my limited time and energy to developing myself as an artist.  I soon realized that the nature and treatment of this disease are completely unpredictable.  Some days I was on top of the world and felt I could conquer anything.  While most days, I felt I couldn’t even muster enough strength to hold a pencil.  After a change in treatment, I started to feel more myself and art began to be a constant again.  I began to put more emotion into my work and found that enjoyment in art that I had lost.  This disease has taught me that it is unpredictable and controlling, but something it will never control will be my art.



Update on Wednesday, March 20, 2013 at 8:49PM by nick kostiv

In October I applied to show my work alongside the work of other people and artists living with MS.  The online MSAA Art Showcase is up and I was selected to be one of those artists to share my story and work.  Please check it out when you get a chance and for more information on MS or to donate to the MS 150 that I will be participating in please click this link.  Thanks

Silence

Using a Bamboo Pen to Paint

Printmaking has been on my mind constantly lately.  It's a medium that I would like to explore more and more.  There are two big problems with exploring this medium to it's fullest potential: time and space.  Since I am limited on both at this moment in my life, I have chosen to concentrate on sketching, drawing and picking up the paint brush again.  I appraoched the painting below as I would a reduction woodcut.

The lighter colors were laid down first and then in progression the darker tones.  When I was satisfied with the contrast and the major shapes, I went back in with a bamboo pen and India ink.  I'm extremely happy with the way it turned out and I feel that I need to incorporate more pen and ink work into my paintings.