James Hackett

September rolled around and I expected this wave of confidence and a triumphant return to my art world. I was so wrong. I found myself second guessing a lot of my work and doubting the quality of everything I do.

In trying to figure what was happening I sat back and bit and tried to slow things down, I drove myself into a more humble state ( a personal criticism that I put on myself). I realise that entering fashion year 3 I am now in a position where I feel at a crossroads, watching what I was able to do as an artist in the past and realising that I am about to enter new territory. This time it is harder work than I have done before where anything new I learned seemed effortless,  these new abilities and skills I am trying to acquire is more challenging than anything that I have taken on before.

It is a bit scary because I can’t just “wing it”. I have to go all in, it is a devotion and a passion I must unlock even more that I always reserved for pockets  of various interests of mine, but those have only gotten me so far. Now it is about commitment and me taking the plunge to do what I must to fully benefit from this decision to do fashion.

Like I said before I pretty much burned myself out a bit. I do not think that I am creatively dead, although for a moment I thought I would be. I realise that I have to just slow down and focus more  and more on just the things that make me happy. Yes, I do like to draw but I enjoy it most when I am just doing it for myself, the pull of the pencil on paper trying to experiment and see what interesting messes I can make.

This piece is kind of like that. I just drew, to forget anything and everything, I just wanted to create that image and play with some charcoal and gouache. I enjoyed that and I will be trying more of that. No more dailies or anything like that just a drawing or painting or w/e when I have the time to sit down and relax a bit in between anything that needs to be done.

School is back and I have noticed several classmates have improved in their work, I was quite happy to see their illustrations. This in itself has given me a nice vibe of my own. I am clearing the clutter and doing what I need to do ever so often.

Simple.

I really wanted to do several things in time for this birthday. I wanted to attempt a solo show, I should have a completed my 360 day project. These things I fell short of, I however do not think that anything was lost by trying to accomplish these things but I gained a lot in the journey and my attempts at trying.

Going for these goals I think that as an artist and a creator I have grown quite a bit. I have a certain sense of humility and understanding in my abilities and school continues to affect me positively from the classmates to the teachers. I believe I am really benefiting from making the decision to do fashion.

Why did I slow down? I really felt a bit burnt out creatively. I was drawing and creating and doing things like a mad man and add certain emotional and other consequential set backs and your steam can pretty much be gone, So 10 months into my year long plans I felt like I needed a break. So I took it just relaxed and enjoyed myself.

Celebrating my birthday today my batteries are not fully charged but I am quietly there and still trying, still believing I have the passion just maybe slowing down a tad to enjoy myself some more and work less on proving anything to others and more just to satisfy me, which I may have missed along the road somewhere last year.

On Saturday had a good time with some of the illustrators who I continue to meet on Facebook.  At first I was worried that no one was going to show up when I sat in the Mall’s food court alone at 12, but I got out my book and started drawing, one by one people started pouring in and before you know it we are all talking and having fun sketching.

We even had our own emo blasting session. We changed from the challenge of the day ( the seven sins) to doing our own emo people and how generic it can be. I think it was Claire who vividly painted a scene where the mall becomes dark as a thick cloud of them descend onto the food court. We image there might be a territorial battle in the future, them vs us!

Next meetup is scheduled for some time in August.

Day 4 continues with Erotic Art week shows. Today I also went up to the Mall for the second edition of We Does Draw. More on that tomorrow.

Day 3 Erotic Art Week continues.

Today Continues more Erotic Art Week. I plan to go check out what the other Artists have in on display. Yesterday had a nice mistake of sorts.

The Fabric I used to project my Images on were a bit different. Chinyere, despite Baidawi’s and my best instructions, brought us a kind of organza that was a little too translucent for what we had in mind for the projection screen.  This kinda turned out to be an interesting mistake so we went with it. The lighting came out almost like living graphic separations as it passed from fabric to fabric, it is possible that later on we will try something similar for future shows.

So today I started my Exhibition for Erotic Art Week. It was a collaboration of Music and images again with the Detnator team.

We pretty much displayed my Pieces Via projection, and set a playlist of tunes to create an ambiance for what was on display, at intervals I would go create a piece live and then add it to a flow in the projection.

Responses have been good on the first day and some guests were even surprised that all the music were locally created by the Detnator team. I have good taste! Erotic Art Week continues all week long until the 31st

This illustration was used in today’s Outlish magazine. I tried something new with the style, thought it worked out. Check it out.

Busy Busy stockpiling my dailies felt like putting this one up. Chicks with guns.

Added the dailies for May. Working on the June.

So there are some other creative projects and events I am part of and another one I had some fun with was this event. Join the facebook group in the link., be a part of it if you like. The next one is planned for the 24th of July at Trincity Mall Food Court again.