New Piece

Probably a little self indulgent to have a picture of myself at the top of the page but hey ho it doesn't harm from time to time. I would like to thank Bethany my 10 year old daughter for taing these pictures and for not dropping my new camera. I believe it is important for children to be introduced as much as possible to creativity so Bethany often uses my camera for taking some great pics.

This sycamore form has been sat waiting to be finshed for a while.  The benefit of sycamore is that it moves very little when seasoning especially if the growth rings are concentric. So a quick clean up with the gouge was all that was needed for the outside and a scraper for the inside before finishing with abrasive.

The texturing has been completed and now I have to decide where to go with it next. I have a vague idea as it will be a continuence of my Japanese inspired work but I would like to include some different materials so will have to see how it turns out.

Update

Very little time spent in the workshop lately as I have been writting and designing  new work, turning them into drawings and collecting reference material for the same. The work load also became restrictive in relation to being able to be creative so I have decided to give myself more time and space to get back into making as I don't do tread mill anymore and creating is where my love is. So back to it I am with new enthusiasm and ideas, its like being five again in the local sweety shop.

Also not sure if I mentioned this previously ( I may have done as I do repeat myself) that I have been sourcing new materials to work with which I now have and am looking forward to playing around with. Of course this means more tools which breaks my heart to have to buy :-).

So I will be back in the workshop now with more time dedicated to making with new work finally being made. In fact my time will mostly now be on making and selling again as I am needing to move into new directions as previously mentioned.

Anyway more about that in future postings but I hope to be posting more picture of my work soon for those interested.

Monday night was spent at a demo in Burnham-On-Sea where I demonstrated a basic bottle type form.

Also I have posted a few more pictures I have recently taken for reference and thought they may be of use to you, or not as the case may be. :-)

Still enjoy the pics and the insect at the bottom has some interesting textures and forms within its body.

Psychology of Creativity

Recently I have been spending a lot of time researching creativity and the processes behind being this subject. Being creative is not about technical prowess with the tools beyond that of safe practices, but about how I work through and view ideas, solutions which I then may or may not use within my work.

Any way I found "The Psychology of Creativity", while surfing the information highway. There are various other subjects and links within the site that may also be of interest so I thought I would post it here..

Other interests

Other than turning, photography and many other subjects I also am interested in building web sites as an ancillary interest to my own web site development.

Part of any business is marketing. This is expensive in the initial stages so being able to do as much of this myself saves me money, however much more than this is it another creative process that involves much research and the learning of new skills.

This I have always found enjoyable as I believe that within reason I can achieve any skill that I want with time and practice.

So when I needed a web site I built my own. The first was not brilliant, the one I have now is a bit better but again needs refining. The more I become involved in a certain skill/project the more I refine and look at the small detail so that I can continually progress the idea.

Continually looking closely at what I make is a major part of the philosophy behind the way I work. I do not understand how I can progress unless I look at the fine detail and continually strive to refine.

This may be the refining of a particular process, design but more importantly the way I think and view my work.

So while I am taking some time out for reflection,I have been working on several other projects, working with new materials and building a few web sites, one being this here.

Looking at other ways of working/creating, whether it is sculpting, turning, painting, gardening or web design. the process is very much the same.

Web site update

The "Contemporary Wood Collective" web site has now been updated with a new domain of .co.uk as compared to .com

New updates will be carried out soon, however if you have tried visiting the site recently and found it down I just wanted you to know that it is now up and running again.