JO. B. CREATIVE!: ARTISTICALLY GENIUS OR RUBBISH

ARTISTICALLY GENIUS OR RUBBISH

According to hubby I'm either capable of being a genius artistically or I'm equally adept at producing rubbish when experimenting.

I concur.

The genius accolade arrives unexpectedly when I'm creating art, whether it be a pastel drawing or an acrylic painting. And it usually heads off in an abstract-ish direction.

GENIUS OR RUBBISH?! 😄

NOT CERTAIN IT'S GENIUS,
BUT I LOVED CREATING THIS!

I'd love to experiment, artistically. I used to be what I'd call a 'safe' artist, and I was considered clever as a creative. That's nice - excellent. My safe work was pretty conventional back then - I'd create 'realistic' characters in oils, pencil or gouache - pirates, cowboys and girls (my wild west thing was evolving), Victorian women or otherwise, usually using magazine photographs for reference. Or psychedelia (bearing in mind that this was the swinging sixties). I didn't want to create pretty landscapes, flowers or portraits. Stuff that actually sells.

FROM A MAGAZINE AD - AN OIL PAINTING
CREATED WHEN I WAS A TEENAGER,
PEPPED UP RECENTLY USING
A CANVA FRAME

AN ABSTRACT PASTEL LANDSCAPE

A STYLISED ACRYLIC WOMAN

ACRYLIC PAINTED TWIGS ON BOARD

I attended a foundation art year after school in the early seventies that gave you the basics of various artistic disciplines - life drawing (you should have seen some of the models - maybe not), sculpture, photography, printing (I never got to grips with it), graphic design, followed by jobs in advertising studios.

Before I had kids I did a three-year illustration course and earned myself a Diploma in Art and Design SIAD (Society of Illustrators, Artists and Designers.). Now I'm just showing off. Several years later I did a correspondence art course with the Open College of Creative Arts which was brilliant and opened up my mind to all kinds of creativity.

From that I began to expand my repertoire with still lives, abstracts, inks, charcoal, stylised, collage, 2D, sculpture...

A COLLAGE & A CANVA FRAME

A SELECTION OF ART USING CANVA

Hubby and I joined a local art group which was enormous fun. When our lovely, somewhat eccentric tutor moved to the Isle of Wight, that was very sad. We'd lost our eclectic, fun-loving group. The essential spark had vanished and we haven't found anything to replace it. My ideal group would be happy to explore and experiment, perhaps go mad painting BIG, perhaps from different angles like lying on the floor or from the top of a cupboard! Be an art student again. 😍

I've been studying multidisciplinary and eclectic art practices, and they're so inspiring! Incorporating video, sculpture, fashion, travel, murals ... you name it, into one's art practice. I love it and I'd love to do that. One artist's words stuck in my head. He said: 'My art styles look like they've been done by ten different artists.' I loved that! I know they say that if an artist produces too many different styles and disciplines, they're hard to market, but there's always a way to manage that.

I've always have creative studio areas in our house - but actually using them and actually creating art has proved very hard, and, in the past, depressing. I've been so intent on writing, editing, publishing and marketing Alias Jeannie Delaney my epic western trilogy, that visual creativity barely had a look in. I say 'had', because marketing the story has made me create visual promotional material on Canva, and for that I'm very pleased.

I've suffered depression for years, all through writing the trilogy. Since having my kids, essentially, and I'm aware that art can be a great therapy for depression. Sadly I have to be upbeat and not depressed to create art. *Sigh and bugger*.

Eh, well. So, where am I now?

My ambition is for the trilogy to become a best seller (and why not, I ask myself?), and to become a well known, selling artist. Again - why not?

Just to finish off, here's some more 'stuff' with a couple of western inspired pieces, including Jeannie, my Alias Jeannie Delaney protagonist, at the bottom. Hope you like it. 😊I'm rather pleased with it. Thankyou Canva!

Facebook Jo Ballantyne

Facebook Kit Mackenzie Author Page

Kit Mackenzie Author Website
Kitty Le Roy's Wild West Saloon Facebook Group
Kitty Le Roy's Wild West

Jo.B.Creative

Facebook Twitter Linkedin Pinterest Instagram YouTube

THIS WAS CREATED USING ART I MADE
MANY YEARS AGO!

ALIAS JEANNIE DELANEY - THE STORYLINE

Dynamic pants-wearing cowgirl Jeannie Morgan is tomboy beautiful and the fastest gun west of the Mississippi - her snake strike speed and aim are legendary. Her extraordinary sexuality is as fluid as a miner's whiskey, and men and women alike enjoy the magnificence of her love making.

Jeannie must navigate the grit and sweat of the wild frontier and face her desires and identity through deadly confrontations as she seeks acceptance in this big, bad world and kill or be killed. She takes on roles deemed only suitable for men, but her powerful persona and lethal gun make her the perfect candidate. Will she find what she seeks - acknowledgement and acceptance? Or will her tomboy beauty, her powerful persona and her lethal gun finally be the death of her?

IF YOU'VE READ & ENJOYED THE STORY SO FAR, I'D BE INCREDIBLY GRATEFUL IF YOU COULD LEAVE A POSITIVE REVIEW ON AMAZON. THANK YOU SO MUCH!