Art – Page 73 – red paper boat

Vessels: 3 x 9

February 24, 2005March 24, 2015 Shelly

Vessels: 3 by 9 (with detail)
mixed media on paper

This is the latest installment in the Vessels series. It’s a combination of Pitt pen, Koh-I-Noor watercolor pencils, Neocolors II water-souluble wax crayons, and collage on yummy Cartiere Magnani paper. I’m much happier with this piece than #17–not so much because I think the final image is all that much better, but because the process of getting to the end result was more satisfying.

I’m especially happy with the leaves. I usually don’t enjoy the process of cross-hatching. It’s a bloody pain in my behindermost parts to get the sort of result I want. It’s a little difficult to tell, even from the detail, but there there are layers upon layers upon layers of cross hatching, which gives a velvety depth to the drawing. The paper held up very well to this sort of abuse.

Altered Photos, Art

Altered Photos

February 24, 2005 Shelly

I’ve been meaning to scan these for awhile. These were all altered with just bleach. I used Q-tips, a syringe, and my fingers to apply the bleach. I used both diluted and undiluted bleach. Caveat: if using undiluted bleach, I recommend having a tub of water handy or do your altering in the kitchen sink with the water running. You’ll need to act quickly or the bleach will completely eat away the emulsion. I found that using a syringe filled with a 50/50 bleach/water solution, pre-wetting the photo with running water, and running the photo through the water as soon as the bleach was applied worked best.

I really like the way the squarish photo of the snake turned out. That effect was gotten by filling the bottom of a lunch plate with a 50/50 bleach/water solution, dipping the center of the photo in the liquid, then immediately running it under water.

Art, Journals

El Papa

February 24, 2005December 23, 2015 Shelly

El Papa
acrylic, Faber-Castell Pitt pen, and gold leaf in composition book journal

There was a segment on the evening news about the Pope. He’s been hospitalized again, so I thought I’d do a little drawing in his honor.

Art

Radishes, Again, and Paper

February 23, 2005 Shelly

I’m having my mid-morning snack (actually, since I get up at 4am, it’s more of a mid-day snack). I’m still on a radish bender. Yesterday’s radishes were hot and slightly smoky tasting, but they were nice and crunchy. Today’s radishes are sweet and garlicky. The flesh is crisp and delicately veined with red and pink. Mmm.

In artings news, I started on another drawing for the Vessels book last night. It’s Pitt pen and watercolor pencil on paper. Oh, and such paper!–140 lb Cartiere Magnani hot press. It’s yummy stuff, soft and silky and perfectly balanced. I don’t normally like the finish on hot press papers, but I think I’m in love. The act of putting pen to this paper is a joy.

I’m getting ready to begin a journal round robin for the Art Erratica group. Mail out date is March 15, so I need to get started on binding this puppy. (Who? Me? Procrastinate?) I’ve been putting it off because I couldn’t decide what materials I wanted to use. I guess I can check paper off the to-figure-out list. And binding (I’m going with coptic). Now I just need to decide what I want to do for the cover and whether or not I’m going to wrap the spine edge of each signature with a decorative paper or, hmmm, maybe ribbon?

Art, Collage, Letters to Esther

Vessels: Tesserae

February 20, 2005 Shelly

Vessels: Tesserae
collage

This is another in the Vessels series. I’m not completely happy with it, but that’s how it goes sometimes. The title comes from the central image–the interior of a mosque dome. The tiny tiles that make up the mosaic are called tesserae. A Latin word, it also was used by the Romans to describe small plaques of bone or wood that served as tallies or identification vouchers. A multitude of tiles creating a larger picture; a multitude of people creating a larger society. Each tiny piece is important to the whole, but in becoming part of the whole, the pieces cease exist as individuals. The understanding that there exists an unending conflict between individual identity and society as a whole is at least as ancient as Homer’s Akhilles. Yeah, he was a whinging mamma’s boy, but he did have a legitimate complaint.

There was a recent-ish discussion in one of my groups about old family photographs. Someone said that, after she was dead and gone, who would care who those people were? It’s probably true, and I find that incredibly sad. Maybe that’s why I’ve been so obsessed with getting all the Letters to Esther transcribed. I hate to think that no one cares. I’m not particularly religious. I don’t believe in an afterlife. Once we’re dead, we’re dead. The only way we continue on is in the consciousness of others and in the marks we make on this Earth. If we leave no marks and are unremembered, we truly go back to the dust and ashes from whence we came–just one unremarkable grain of sand among millions of other unremarkable grains of sand.

Art, Collage

Vessels: Fruits

February 20, 2005 Shelly

Fruits
collage

Another piece for the Vessels book.

I thought I’d use up some of the photos I’d altered. I didn’t like the way they turned out, so I didn’t want to use them as stand-alone pieces. I saved them, though, thinking I might use them in a larger project. The little figure in the center is Baubo. I have no idea what the photo under the olla used to be. The image at the upper left is of a bronze cross. I believe it was made in Africa, though I have no idea where. Baubo was sanded; the two other photos were sanded and liberally augmented with metallic gold wax.

And, yes, the tomato is a fruit.

Art, Collage, Paintings

Vessels: Conceiving the Plan

February 19, 2005March 24, 2015 Shelly

Vessels: Conceiving the Plan
mixed media

I called my mom this morning and spent three hours talking to her. Where does the time go? While I was on the phone, I took another look at the watercolor I did a couple of nights ago. Ugh. It was just as bad as I remembered. I figured, since I was gabbing and my hands weren’t busy, I may as well try to salvage what I could. I diluted some gesso and splashed it over the paper, let it sit for a bit, then blotted up the excess. That lightened everything and left a milky, mottled cast to the image that I quite liked. You can see the remains of the effect in the lower left-hand corner.

I then got out my Pitt pens and played with the shading. I did some cross-hatching, which helped, but not enough. However, I made a discovery. I was using my grey brush-tip pens and decided to do some washy shading on top of the cross-hatching. The under layer of ink melted and smeared. Hmmm. Pitt pens are permanent when water is applied, but apparently the carrier in the pen itself will melt already-dried ink. That makes sense (otherwise the ink would dry up in the pen, right?), but it hadn’t occurred to me before.

So then I played around with laying down dark areas and using the lightest brush tip pen to melt and redistribute the ink. Oh frabjous day! I really like how the final image turned out. It’s not perfect, but I’m pleased that I was able to salvage it. I think it’ll make a nice addition to the Vessels book.

Art, Collage, Paintings

Blue Horizons

February 18, 2005March 24, 2015 Shelly

Blue Horizons

Cave

I had to use Flickr again. I like how easy it is to upload and manage images, but I’m not happy with the thumbnails it generates. They’re a little too small, I think. I prefer 120 pixels instead of 100. Hrmph. So, I decided to use the next larger size as thumbnails. (Yes, I really do obsess about these sorts of things!) Anyway… Both of these collages are destined for the Vessels book I’m working on.

Blue Horizons: As always, I turned to Mr. Dictionary to see if there was anything I was overlooking. One definition given for “horizon” is “The limit of the theoretically possible universe.” I like that. It speaks to exploration and a potential to be fulfilled.

Cave: This image came from a scenic/touisty type magazine. I tore it into vertical slivers, then inked the margins (my hands are still stained black) and used a Q-tip soaked with ink to color between the torn pieces. I like the way the vertical black lines echo the errosion lines in the rock face.

In mythology, caves are places where the underworld and the real world meet. The cave, like the cauldron, cup, and chalice, also echos the womb. It is the place from which things are born.

Conceiving the Plan

This is a piece in progress. I’m not happy with the way it turned out (watercolors drive me insane), so I’m probably going to either use the painting in a collage or collage over parts of the painting. We’ll see.

Art, Bookarts, Journals

Dada Book

February 16, 2005September 28, 2015 Shelly

These are a few pages from the Dada book I’ve been working on. It’s made of pages from Real Simple magazine. Some of the images in the magazine are great for collage, but I find the overall tone is pretty insufferable. What better use to put the left-overs to than to rip them up and turn them into a Dada-esque journal?

I had intended to use it mostly for collage, but I’ve ended up using it for “evening pages.” Some of the folks in one of my art groups are working through The Artist’s Way. I had planned on working on it with them, but I decided that waking up any earlier than I already do–just to journal–would be cruel and unusual punishment–4am is plenty early enough, thankyouverymuch! So, I’ve been doing some very quick pages right before I go to bed. I’m finding that it’s a nice way to cap off the day–sort of like getting in the last word.

This is a crappy picture, taken with my ubercheap digital camera. The book is small and chunky: 5.5 x 4.5″ and about 1″ thick. I used a coptic stitch to bind it, which was a bit of a challenge. The clay-coated magazine pages are weak and brittle, so they crack easily. I had to remove a couple of signatures because the holes ripped open as I was sewing the binding. I ended up with 13 signatures of 20 pages each.

Art, Collage

Vessels: Attun

February 15, 2005 Shelly

Vessels: Attun
collage

I tried to upload this last night, but I couldn’t get online. So, I’m trying out Flickr, because it’s accessible from work. It seems easy enough, but I’m not sure I like the size of the thumb-nails. I’m also not keen on the the way images are displayed. I really like the transparency of Hello. But, beggars can’t be choosers, right?

Anyway, this piece is yet another in the new Vessels series. After I had the basic lay-out sorted, I started playing around with some letters I’d cut out of an architecture magazine. My options were limited, word-wise, so I settled on attun. Hmmm. I was sure I’d come across the word before, but I couldn’t remember the context or meaning. A quick Google turned up this. Oh, serendipity!

http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-hebrew/2000-January/005986.html

Dr. Marcus Jastrow defines ‘attun /’attun’a as “fire-place, stove; a fire-place of which the fire has been scraped out.” … However, it is also used in Targum Onqelos to translate the Hebrew word kavshen at Exodus 19:18, which is a “kiln for lime or pottery,” (BDBG) and was used to describe the smoking mountain of the theophany. Or as some translate this Hebrew word also, a “furnace.” It would appear that the word ‘attun is not explicit, except to refer to a large place used for burning. Yet ordinarily, that might favor furnace or kiln over a bread oven.