ArtiphyTheHeart

Day 5 Of 30 Days Of Drawing

There are more components to making art than most people are aware of.  Encapsulated within each component of the process is the entire process itself, in much the same way that the entire plant is contained within the seed.  

Drawing is so much more than skill with pen on paper that the skill with pen on paper is often dwarfed in comparison to the rest of the process.  The choices to be made are first and foremost.  What paper: Plain?  painted? patterned? photograph, etc.?  What medium: Pencil? ink? paint/type of paint? crayon? pastel, etc.?  What will the first mark be?  Where will it be made?  Will it be from the imagination?  Or from a model?  How much to add?  When to stop?  What to take away?  Positve space?  Negative space?  Photorealisim?  Realistic?  Abstract?  Whimsy?  Serious?  Color?  Grayscale? Lighting?  Collage/placement?  ...the list goes on, and it is endless.  Many of these decisions are automatic;  some are consciously thought out, sometimes easily, sometimes in agony.

Today's drawing is illustrative of a movie I saw and loved.  Nightwatch.  It's a Russian horror film, and a youtube video of the trailer follows.  If you are disturbed by horror movies, don't watch the video.  But if you love great special effects and are a fan of well acted, well scripted, beautifully lit, and beautifully fimed intensity, then this may be for you.  I won't tell you anything about it.  One person's description is another person's spoiler, and I hate spoilers.

As for my drawing, it's in the art journal/sketchbook that will be finished at the close of 2011.  Some of the decisions I made for this drawing were as follows:

• grayscale
• photographs
• deep green background paper
• Rapidograph and India ink
• Bats as stylized "V"s and other marks drawn around the roof tops of the photo on the left
• "Night Watch" as two words in all caps drawn by inking-in the negative space of a rectangle

 

I'm participating in Traci Bunkers 30 Days of Drawing.  There's room for everyone in this challenge, and I can guarantee that whatever you draw, you'll be better for it.  Click the link and join us!

Cha Cha Cha Changes.....

Every ending is a new beginning, and change is a constant, not a variable.   Even the slightest turning can bring about profound results.  If you're looking to change something in the new year and you're not sure where to start, begin by beginning.

Prepare yourself for change by transforming something you're comfortable with.  Anything works. It's logic, not magic.  When your body performs a transformation specifically, your unconscious records the change in general terms, as well.  Like gently stretching a muscle to prepare for exercise, you can pave the way for future transformations by making smaller changes, consciously and deliberately.  Specific changes become easier when the state of change is no longer foreign.  Life is more flexible and pliant.

Underneath the layers of collage and paint in my journal page are more layers of collage and paint.  I re-did a page that had outlived its meaning to me.  What was underneath doesn't matter now, but it will always be a part of me, so instead of ripping it out, I left it there and turned it into something new.  

In thinking about the new year ahead, the question is not:  "Will anything change?",  but:  "How will things change?"  Looking within is always a good place to start.  And while we're on the subject of change, here are a couple of things, just for fun....

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

It's March--Ten Days In, And I'm Asking Myself, "Where Did February Go?"

It's been raining lately, and I love it!  

       

This blew in from out of nowhere and took root in the back yard.  It's all alone.  I wish it would invite some of its friends to join it!

I've been working on lots of new things lately.  Here's one of them:

       

Not the funky doll...she's just holding the book open so you can see the pages.   I'll do the penwork, doodling, journaling, and maybe other things later.  This is just a peek at what I've glued-down.  You can always take a trip to my flickr to see the finished pages. 

                               
 

And here's something you need something to do:  Watch this movie!  You can see the whole thing for free on Hulu.  They change out things frequently, so be quick or you might miss it.  Here's the trailer.  It does not do justice to the final film, which is awesome.

        

Ignore the "language".  Make up your mind not to be offended.  There isn't much of it anyway, and it's the message that counts.  Messages, really.  Ink -- that's the name of the movie -- has one theme with multiple messages, all of them relevant.  And if you're bored and confused at first, stick with it.  Pretty soon you won't be.  There's an interview with the filmmakers HERE, but I'd watch the movie first.  The interview assumes you've seen it and gives too much away.

A Banner Month...

...One For the Studio...

A couple of months ago I downloaded the Spring Garden Fairies  from Ten Two Studios.  I love working with sheets of components to mix and match, and I love separate arms, legs, and torsos because I can pose them any way I choose.  The vibrant colors in these dolls are fabulous. They are the perfect contrast for the layers of mixed yellows, umbers, and titan buff (raw titanium matte) which pick up some of the other yellows in my studio, and the glaze pen border on top of the acrylic painted pennants!

There's another great banner in my studio that Tracey Lynn Huskamp made.  It's gorgeous.  It says "S-T-U-D-I-O, and it's made of vintage, glided edged portrait mats and vintage glass glitter.  I'll cherish it always and never replace it,  but it's the same color as my wall, and after a lot of soul-searching, I really don't want to repaint the wall, even though the banner is worthy of a better background.   So I came up with this companion banner. These pennants, threaded through with khaki silk ribbon, sit on the opposite wall from Tracey's banner and spell out: "My * Sanctuary".  The facing banners are very different, but perfectly compliment each other.

Here's a bit of a wider view (above), and the entire piece (below).

I must apologize for the photo quality.  I'm not the world's best photographer, but I clean-up well in Photoshop...or at least I could clean-up well, if Adobe would ever get my copy of CS-4 in the mail!  I ordered the X-plat upgrade in May, and I'm still patiently waiting...promises, promises!

Those very few of you who are my Flickr friends have seen pics of my studio (which I will not share with everyone), so you'll know how beautifully this banner fits!  And speaking of fitting in, the Crazy Amigo theme posted last Tuesday was "ladies", One Powerful Hour on Thursday asked for "favorite color", and on Friday, TGIF challenged "use words".  I think the banner is a pretty good fit for all three of them!

With that now done and lots more on the horizon, I'm:

Taking a break to cook dinner for my family, then

Find something good on Hulu (last night we watched "Super-size" me--tonight we're eating organic!)

Sink deeper into the Gormanghast novels, which--I agree with the literary critics--surpasses Tolkein in both scope and descriptive detail, and then finally,

Get some much-needed rest so I can start fresh tomorrow!

Have a great day, Everyone!

Mistletoe and Wine

 

This Thursday It's All About. . .Mistletoe and Wine!

Now that all the holiday movies are starting to make their way into the theaters and each one is vying for its share of the box office profits, when I ran across some old movie posters, I just had to spice them up for the holidays!  Bette Davis and Paul Muni's characters from "Borderline" (above) make up what is probably one of the more unlikely couples to be found under the mistletoe, but with the right attitude, and a little bit of wine.....who knows?  LOL! 

   

Bogie and Bacall are a little more believable for a holiday romance! 

I digitally altered both posters, removing all of the words except the titles, and re-arranging the colors a bit.  The mistletoe is a .png file from a collection of mine, and I'm not quite sure of the source.  Both are printed onto matte photo paper, cut and arranged on the cards.  The wine bottle and glasses are cut from a holiday catalog,  and everything is mounted onto cream colored card, and tied up for Christmas with red satin ribbon and gold lame.  The black dots were punched from cardstock scrap and glued into place.

The Christmas Pig was found in the same catalog as the wine and the glasses.  I carefully clipped him out, placed him onto the card and accented him with some green dots.  I couldn't resist that expression on his face, and with the addition of a little mistletoe, he really looks to me as if he's on his way to present his lady with a nice Cabernet...that wistful, hopeful look in his eye makes me think he's hoping for an evening of amore!  There's just something about him, even with the beret and the necktie, that makes him seem more Italian than French, so the red, white, and green are more than just the colors of the season, they are also the colors of Italy.

The background is done with several layers of acrylic paint.  All of the elements for the tag, with the exception of Signore de Maiale (Mr. Pig), are off-cuts and leftovers from other projects.  Even the tag itself is a recycled price tag that was on a sweater I purchased a year or so ago, so truly this tag is "green" in more ways than one!  Therefore, it will go into the Arty Girlz Recycling Challenge, as well!

The mistletoe is another print of the same clipart I used above, this time carefully cut and glued into place instead of digitally layered and blended.

There's a wonderful prize at the This Thursday blog that you won't want to miss out on, so hurry on over and take a peek!   Susie has donated a great collection of clear stamps, so be sure to get in on the draw, and good luck!!

Have a great day, Everyone!