Happy New Year. I made this painting this morning after having some breakfast and taking a walk. These are flowers sitting on my dining room table.
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Today, color was involved. Pete and I went at some paper with watercolor crayons and woodless color pencils and ink. We played the game where each of us took turns drawing lines and coloring in shapes until we had something. Watching the pigment from the crayons melt with water was fascinating, that same enchantment when one finds brown milk after a bowl of cocoa puffs.
Here, we decided to paint some triangles with acrylic. It is an interesting painting to me because you can see we are having a conversation with triangles and disagree.
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Pete B. and I had a little drawing session today. We missed Claire’s drawing exercises, both agreeing that those exercises yielded some deep satisfaction that all the posters we made didn’t. We started by trying out some newfangled pen nibs, the kind that are designed to control the flow of ink. We made these drawings together by playing a drawing game where each person takes turns drawing one line at a time until a picture emerges, then adding elements until there is a certain level of repleteness that both drawers agree on. It felt very much like a game of Go.
After those drawings, we went outside and drew from life (Claire always said to do that) and we drew the view from a nearby park. Here’s my drawing of the boats nearby.
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I had a hollow feeling today. The urge to create now that I have time freed up after school projects commencing and time beginning to stretch out into the blur of the next two weeks. I don’t want to let myself become passive and sleepy while I wait for the next quarter’s assignments to motivate me. Nor can I force myself to create interesting paintings.
Update later that day:
I added some yellowish brown watered down and decided that I loved it too much to add anything else. Brave and foolish people take a nice background and try to improve upon it.
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Over the weekend, Dan and I made this mix for a Christmas Gift. Today I designed the cover art. This mix is very pleasant, relaxing violin and piano melodies. I wanted to present a modern twist on a classic Debussy sound. I was going to supplant it with lots of Amelie soundtrack songs, but I really like what I found instead, featuring tracks by Tom Waits, Nine Inch Nails and Jason Webley.
01. Hey Marseilles – Cities 02. Radiohead -NoSurprises 03. Jason Webley – Evelyn Evelyn Theme 04. Radiohead – Let Down 05. Hey Marseilles – Marseilles 06. Jason Webley – Sandy’s Theme 07. DeVotchKa – The Oblivion 08. Tom Waits – Poor Edward 09. Philip Glass – Massman 10. The Decemberists – Cocoon 11. Marketa Irglova – The Hill 12. Tom Waits – Alice 13. Nine Inch Nails – 13 Ghosts II 14. Radiohead – Subterranean Homesick Alien 15. Sufjan Stevens – Concerning The Ufo Sighting Near Highland
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This is my mock-up for my final in drawing class. The assignment: to illustrate narrative (we had the choice of five different short stories and poems. I chose this.) Today in class we met in groups and gave a little feedback to each other. It’s always a little intimidating (I am sure I intimidated someone, too) when we talk about works in progress. A lot of us in class had ideas for pop-up features, movable parts and overarching concepts. How will it look with a sea you can move with a string or a wheel revealing changing moons? I am going to love pouring over these accordion books when all is said and done. This is one of the more challenging and open-ended assignments we’ve had so far The choice of materials, audience, interpretation, length, depth, etc. I’m feeling that look of concern from my mental Tim Gunn. “Are you trying to put too much in this design? Think about time. Make it work!” I loved talking to Claire about my direction. She said she liked it, but play with shifting scale more and also consider the movement in the lower area. My book is going to have an element stretch onto all of the pages. I thought of my accordion book as a musical piece and she was referring to the countermelody underlying my motif to keep it interesting and flowing forward. I have been thinking a lot about how all of the little details I am learning about design and imagining how each art, music, writing, light design have their own bag of tricks, principles and mantras. “Think about scale and positioning” is one of ours (at least that’s what Jill would have me think).
Update 12-10:
I inked all the lines for the book. Now what’s left is coloring. (I have heard some say that it’s better to color and then line because you can correct errors a from the coloring process, but I think the contrast of the line from the paper prevents those little errors in the first place.)
Update 12-14:
I colored these this yesterday using colorific markers and added water to them to give them the watercolor look. At first I regretted that I didn’t use straight up watercolors because the markers left stroke lines, but I was surprised by the watercolor paper’s ability to soak up water. Due to the marker ink being washable, the ink moves around after drying (Just add water!) while my black waterproof ink stayed in place.
Update 12-15: Covers (Title in french because I liked the way it rhymed.)
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I made this series of illustrations for the Yoks book of the year as a Christmas present to Dan. I used watercolor paper (in a spiral bound book) and nib and ink as well as some grey washes and some small marker work. I know he will love it in all its imperfections (and cuteness).
