Art on the Side

How a painting grows

This series of images shows the stages of this painting, from the sketch and underpainting, to the final finished piece.
This painting was done in oil on canvas.

To begin, I made a study in oil pastels on fome-core to see what I thought about the composition.

I was pretty pleased with this, so decided to do a full-sized painting.

Step 1 - the underpainting in ochre

Step 2 - starting to block in some color. There is often a lot of red in mossy greens, so the red goes in first

Step 3 -- the sky and the rocks are really starting to take shape now. Trying to decide if I want to keep the gravel path or not

Step 5 --adding some ochre glazing to give the painting depth and warm up the greys in the rocks. I added glaze (a thin transparent coat of paint) to several areas of the painting, and then went back in with some opaque paint to provide highlights.

The finished painting. The image runs around the edge of the canvas so that it can hang unframed if needed, or in a floater frame.

The Weird Wonderful World of Human Capital

This was a small book filled with delightful watercolor images of a young girl.  Excerpts from the bible were combined with prayers and graces.  It made me wonder what children really do pray for, around the world. 

Several of the photographic images in the book came from the recent newsletter for Medicins San Frontiers (aka Doctors Without Borders). 

The photo image above came from an old book of photos called "Night".

The photo of the young girl above right came from "Night", and was shot by Patrick Zachmann in Thailand.

Images from Altered Book: The Path of the Artist

The cover

Photo from Julia Margaret Cameron.  She says of this photo she was trying to work in the style of Rembrandt.  But I had this etching by Albrecht Durer (1471-1528)  in my image box, and I thought the similarity was striking.  Rembrandt lived (1606-1669).  The portrait top right is of Cameron.

 

The picture flips up... a portion of the obverse is visible on the next page through the cut-out

Imagined correspondence...

The 6 photos listed on the left are tip in pages

What Marianne North (portrait top right) said about having her portrait taken by Cameron is inside the envelope.  The words are Cameron's, in reference to moving to Ceylon, where she spent the rest of her days.

"Beautiful", Cameron's last words.  On the right, the flip-up booklet has a brief biography of Cameron.

Altered Book: Path of the Artist

I found out about altered books recently, and was quite enchanted with the concept.   It feels like a collage with narrative.   And what is a narrative really but events or impressions of some kind put into an order. 

I got hold of a biography of Julia Margaret Cameron by Victoria Olsen which was for sale for $1.00 in a book bin.  It was the portraits I was initially interested in, but the spirit of this amazing woman crept into my work more and more, until it really became her story in many ways.   

The book I altered was When Honour's at the Stake by Norman Council in the same bin.

The complete book has  14 double page spreads, plus the cover.  The b+w portrait photos are Julia Margaret Cameron's -- the architectural images are mine.   There are a number of interactive elements as well.
(Pictures to follow in next posts)