01/09/2024
Hello everyone,
Living abroad, I wanted to give sharing my art a shot. I never really thought of sharing my art in public or putting it up for sale. Events during my PhD led up to this thought.
Last year, I picked up the brush again and started painting and drawing. Not that I haven’t done so before, but I had been slightly adamant about “collecting” or “documenting”—i.e., not making a collective of my art since I lost some of it in 2021. However, I started sketching and painting in a new diary gifted by two of my friends. I made some elementary sketches depicting myself and tried my hand at oil painting. The oil painting itself is a journey that I would “document” separately because I want to share my mistakes.
Anyway, at the end of 2023, the thought occurred to me that I could probably contact an art gallery to display my art. I did so at the beginning of this year, sharing a couple of my art pieces, but I knew I did not have enough or rather any quality work to display, yet to my dismay, received some rejections.
I have a habit of checking menus of different restaurants and cafes just as a pastime. Nowadays, a lot of them share their details on social media. I came across this coffee shop’s Instagram page, and after some random digging, I discovered them promoting local artists. I checked the profiles of the artists too—gosh, they all were very established, but I thought I would email them nevertheless. A couple of days later, in March 2024, I received a reply where the event manager wanted to meet me at the coffee shop. This was actually the first time I was visiting the coffee shop. It was a brief meeting—she was happy to keep my art and said she would share the available dates very soon. A week or so later, I received dates from her, and the only availability for 2024 was in July, and it could be booked by someone else very soon. It was already the end of March. I do have a full-time job which is my first priority. I needed time to decide. I didn’t have anything to put up on the walls. I have limited space and time. Totally confused, I confirmed those dates: 8th July to 19th August. There were many things I needed to figure out—what form of art do I want to showcase, do I want to display prints or originals, what medium, what size, where to get framing done, what type of paper, how do I hang, how would I even carry them myself, etc. I wanted to give my very best, but there were constraints. I did not have any additional help as well. So, addressing the issues one by one, I thought of printing some of the sketches done on my phone in 2020 because this is a style I developed in 2020 and wanted to showcase this. But the quality of prints could be a big issue since I drew these merely on the Instagram app. I used several online websites to check the quality. Then took some prints later, but I was not satisfied. If I were to print in sizes bigger than A4, the quality could deteriorate. Plus, printing, checking quality, etc., could end up taking a month, and at the end of it, I may have nothing. So no to prints. In fact, this also made me decide that as long as possible, I may give/sell my art only as originals. Let’s see how it goes.
Next was the medium. I considered oil painting—but it would take forever to dry. So NO! Then I thought of acrylics, but I have never really painted with acrylics (I am an amateur with oils too, by the way), so no. Then I thought of watercolors, but then felt it could be muted, and I was not very confident of being able to translate those 2020-style sketches with watercolor. Or maybe I could just make something new, but I was reluctant about it. Then I thought of sketching those on paper, and to be honest, I feel I should have gone with this idea, but back then I did not “feel” like it for my first exhibit. Next, I thought of pastels—I have not pastelled for ages. At that moment, I did not have any oil pastels (fire and all!), so the next question was what kind of pastels—soft vs. oil. This was a relatively quick decision; I chose oils because it is thicker, I believe. Then what brand of oils do I pick? My goodness, I learned so much over the next couple of days: lightfastedness and what not—thanks to all the YouTube videos and online articles. I needed to pick one which was good quality but not too expensive. I bought Caran d’ache first and then bought a set of Mungyo Gallery.
The last time I was home, it was in January/February. I wanted to visit in June again, but also with visa renewal and some additional hurdles, I could not book a ticket until too late, and with the exhibition preparation, I just stayed back and decided to allocate all potential travel funds and extra expenses towards materials and framing. Once I received my visa, and booked a solo trip to Albania because I needed a break and wanted to travel. The trip was happening in June, meaning even lesser time.
Next was the kind of paper. I also realise I could have saved some expenses by not being too bothered about these things, but I guess I just wanted to put up the best I could and have answers to everything. For paper, ah, it was again a lot of research, trial and error. This did include quite a few trips to London to check the most suitable paper. Color, texture, and weight of the paper were other questions. At the almost end, I picked Strathmore Gray—lovely sheet. Color gray because I was not able to find extremely black paper—an option was to paint a sheet with Stuart Semple’s black paint or similar other apparently darker paints (according to YouTube videos). Any gray is still gray, but having blacker blacks makes the less black one not that black, I thought first. But then I think you just call the darker one blacker and the lighter one still remains black. I ultimately decided to go for Fabriano Black Black.
Why I say sketching would have been the best choice is because I underestimated how smudgable oil pastels can be. Especially, since I was making some kind of line art, it was even more difficult to keep it clean. At the same time, I really liked this property of oil pastels, meaning they are kind of living and never fully set, which adds a lot of character. Also, drawing with oil pastels is pretty much like actually using my hands/fingers on the paper almost directly, which keeps the original essence of the 2020-style sketches. I used Sennelier fixative to fix them, yet they wouldn’t fix easily. But once I finally started making the sketches at the end of May, I would wrap them up in butter paper and open them only while framing when I had to retouch again.
Talking of frames, this was one of the major concerns, others were regarding transportation and storage. Also, framing shops close after 5 pm and during the weekends, and that is when I actually had time. But during breaks, I had to contact several framing shops, mostly via email and some through calls. A lot of them did not get back, and some did, and only one responded with quotes. Time was passing by. Framing started to look totally unaffordable for me. I could maybe just order from some home store online, but that is not what I wanted. I don’t still know if I made a good decision, but I wanted to buy frames from a specialist. I finally found some places that operated online only. Again, after checking samples and deciding on fixtures and all (took two to three weeks), I finally received the frames right after getting back from my trip. I needed to add spacers because the oil pastels should not touch the surface. Once I was back, I was already in the second half of June. Every day was essential because shops are closed during the weekend, and couriers take two to three business days at least. The next unexpected hurdle was unscrewing D links. I broke my flatmate’s screwdriver, yet I could not unscrew it. I had never used a screwdriver before (yeah, I know!!!!!). I am from India, and a lot of manual work is easily taken care of. My flatmate was away, so I got a set of screwdrivers for her before her arrival—I did tell her I broke it, and if there were any sentimental attachments, I was truly sorry. She is very nice; she did not mind. Okay, so going back to unscrewing, it once again took plenty of research (2 days)—PoziDriv 2.
It might have taken around 10 days for me to finish framing—I was retouching as well. Finally, the day of the exhibition came. I was supposed to hang the frames from 4.30 pm. The day before, I packed all the frames and kept the big ones (A2) outside my room. There were 14 frames in total. I cleaned my room and went to bed. I had shared about the exhibition on my social media. On the day itself, I had taken an off at work. I waited till 4 pm. I took the frames downstairs in two rounds, placing them against the wall. Called the cab and carefully put them in the car. Arrived at the coffee shop. Some hiccups later, I hung all those frames on the walls with my own hands. 🙂
Lot of firsts.
CC