Switching up

Working out a new piece after spending time yesterday at the museum. This is influenced by Rampant Mythical Lion (Vyala), a 8th/9th century sandstone piece from India, Madjya Pradesh or Rajasthan. The piece reminded me how artifact images cross cultures and societies as a similar lion form appeared in an Iranian architectural detail from which I previously drew inspiration and in the Book of Kells from which I have also drawn inspiration in the past.

I don't often start with studies anymore, preferring to work directly with the flow of my materials instead, but I decided to do so on this piece to change up my habits and challenge my entry points into developing work. The first study is more literal than the ultimate piece will be. The second is an initial reduction study. After a few more reduction studies, I'll move to a flow study and then to the piece.

Reduce. Overlay, Recombine

Playing with reducing images to color overlays (upper) and recombining (lower) with the original image (middle)

Color Abstract

Thinking about the limits of volume and linearity.

Figure

Bust

Figure

Working Sunday: new work, rethinking. And a couple proposals to write.

Doubts and more Doubt

I like my current project. But ... I might be the only one who does.

I wonder if other artists feel this way. When I make a drawing on paper, it's a drawing, something tangible, material, transferable. People understand it (even if, perhaps, one does not subjectively care for the image presented). Drawing directly on the wall is recognizable, though ephemeral and not transferable (though it can be mimicked at alternate sites, hence conceptually transferred). By holding to its prior identities, the work I currently am doing feels less easily recognizable as drawing, though, being comprised of objects, it is transferable.

Working on ArtPrize 2010 (II)

Working on ArtPrize 2010

PicADay: Digital Play Fold Flat

PicADay: Digital Play From Inside Outside

There is lots of room for quick and sequential play with digital tools. I am playing with the space between abstraction and representation -- pushing representation into abstraction and pushing the abstraction back to representation.

PicADay: Low Color, Grey

PicADay: Totem

Soft and Hard

Sketchbook Project 4: Cover and Bleed Through

I finished my sketchbook for Sketchbook Project 4. Above, "Converse" (inside front cover + facing page) and "Mark Time: Structure" (back and front cover).

The way the soft cover soaked up ink some times in chunks was frustrating, and after the initial pencil marks and colored pencil coloring, the addition of ink pushed the cover through a couple intermediate stages that I hated. The cover seemed to get worse with each fix. The end image, however, turned out well, with a few scars from the journey. The experience is a good reminder that art often needs to go through the awful, and stages ought not be considered sacrosanct as even successful passages may have to give way for a successful whole to emerge.

I had a small amount of bleed through at the spine. The smattering of unintentional marks seems okay in the overall scheme of the sketchbook. Normally, when I work with a sketchbook, I don't worry about flawed marks or cross outs. Sketchbooks are for working out ideas and for practicing accumulate marks. I'll close my eyes at times and make circles, which end up elliptical, or make cubes which end up as blurs moving around the page. But because this Sketchbook is a submission, and hence, will be on display, it proved difficult to be that carefree. Even if not carefree, I was able to be experimental in my approach. The inevitable result is that some pages work very well, and a few are quite a bit weaker than I would like.

Sketchbook Project 4

I am participating in Art House Coop's The Sketchbook Project 4. Above, Pages 6, 4 and 19 of my sketchbook as of today.

I was assigned "Time" as a theme for my sketchbook -- serendipity as my work involves time. I moved sequentially page to page, cutting much of my sketches with a razor blade, and marking times I made cuts and marks; time markings passed through holes from one page to another page, offering a link between the pages. In some sketches, I arrayed time markings as forms. All the pages have been cut and marked, but I will take a little time away from the sketches before deciding I am done, thus breaking sequence with any additional marks I make.

Separate?

The lion (left) looks out of the picture, taking the viewer's eye with it; there's no return entry point. But the dark eye is like a period, fixed, not entirely a part of the lion, and if lion shape dissolves in the viewer's eye, the viewer's eye does not leave the picture. The dark eye and the hard right edge of the lion (left) and the digging animal (right) are in a circle about the angled highlight line, approximately.

Verticality of the digging animal image stops the plane on which it sits from falling inward. Skewing it causes the right image to lose independent stability but facilitates movement within the combination of the left and right images.

Study: Translucent Float

Tangled Web

Study: Element Orientation