Reverie

Reverie - glue, paper and image, edited and computer generated.

I have been dying to participate in Inspire Me Thursday again for months, but simply haven't gotten around to it. Life is hectic, as usual. But this week - today in fact - I finally found use for the image of Mademoiselle Caroline Rivière that was posted as the week's prompt.

I was stumped looking at this old oil painting, thinking I'd have never been able to interpret or appropriate the image as my own creation. I'm not much of a collage artist, so that was out the window. And I just couldn't be bothered drawing it and stuffing that up.

Then, quite by accident really, this afternoon I stumbled across a list of surrealist techniques on Wikipedia. Whilst looking at some of the awesome things surrealists do, I discovered the idea of "Cubomania". Basically, a photograph or any other image is cut up into small squares. It is then arranged in a manner that aims not to reconstruct the image but rather dissect it, thus scattering complex visual language that may have otherwise been unseen. The eye catches bits and pieces of the composition it would otherwise have overlooked.

So that's exactly what I did. I downloaded the image of Mademoiselle Caroline Rivière from the link on flickr provided within the IMT prompt, then cropped the image and drew up its squares. After having crafted all the lines, the squares where cut, as was a piece of paper to size of the cropped image. I arranged the squares in quite a randomised fashion, then scanned it onto my computer.

From there, I edited the image. I changed the colour to a monochromatic scale. Then, reproduced the image in a flipped fashion - the original image resting beside it - in order to create more interest.

And there you have it, a day dream, a strange reverie created by me and inspired by Madame Rivière.

Old Bird

"Old Bird" - brush & ink, and pen & ink on paper

This afternoon I felt compelled to bring to life a sketch that lay in wait in my art journal. This Old Bird is very much inspired by an even older IMT prompt from around July - "Owl". I actually contributed a photograph of an owl ring for IMT that week, and this quick sketch never saw the light of day again. Until this afternoon that is.

I'm thinking of starting a series on animal masks like this, where the person sort of adapts a characteristic of that animal. This woman with the owl mask is raising her shoulders inwards as if about to squawk or thrust her head and neck out. She's an old and very irritable bird, indeed.

I've never found much inspiration in animals or even been able to draw creatures, as I said when I made my giraffe linocut prints for my mum. But sometimes it's how you actually appropriate a motif to suit your own cause that sets you off.

Cheek to Cheek

When I began to design my next lino print, I decided I would ask my mother if she wanted me to make something for her. I've never painted or drawn or created anything for anyone other than myself before, as artmaking to me has always seemed something personal and exclusive - very much an expression of self. So it truly is an odd phenomenon to be making art for someone else.

I know that she particularly likes lino prints. She was rather pleased when I brought home my Venus prints, and she has - what we expect to be - a linocut print of a platypus hanging in our house, it looks embellished (touched-up) to me.

Anyway, I simply enquired as to whether there was anything she'd like me to picture in it. And, because her favourite animal - other than the platypus - is the giraffe, she requested that I created a print of them.

The quick sketch, before it was transferred

I accepted the challenge, and on Google Images found a rather lovely photograph of - what is presumably - a mother giraffe leaning down towards her baby. They were cheek to cheek, and I knew it was something that would make my Mum happy. After all. I'm her only baby. I adapted it to a quick sketch and then transfered it to the linoleum square (30 x 30 cm), of which I was aware it would be printed backwards.

The actual lino square, complete with carving haha :)

Long story short; I didn't feel that I'd be able to draw it opposite to the original, but whilst I drew and carved I frequently held it infront of the mirror - making sure it was symmetrical enough not to be freakishly disproportionate.

Showing the cuts

I've finished the carving, shaded over it with a piece of paper to check my cuts. Now all that's left is buying some larger paper for the printing process. Back to Eckersley's haha.

IMT: Chalk

A really slack effort on my behalf, I've been busy once again which is my usual excuse. The real deal: productive procrastination. Earlier on in the year I took this photo randomly of the chalk board in my photography class...

I totally promise I will try harder next week. I will make an effort. No more slacking off and waiting until the Tuesday or Wednesday to get something randomly done.

This is part of my 101 Things, which I'm struggling with at the moment.

IMT

While I haven't created anything just yet, I'm really stoked that my suggestion of "Child Art" was chosen for Inspire Me Thursday this week.

I really hope everyone has fun with this topic, as I know I will. I'm really motivated this week to create something messy like Aelita Andre, or something primal like the drawings I made when I was little.

I can't wait to see how everyone interprets the theme :)

Poem: "Letters"

I've been experimenting with poetry lately, as part of one particular challenge in my Day Zero Project. Number 27: Write a poem a day for a month. This wasn't for the challenge, but one of my other tasks is doing IMT everyweek for the duration of the 1001 days (143 weeks). There are more poems on my other blog, if you'd care to have a look.

Here goes.

...

"Letters"

If I were to post this today
Dear Postmaster,
would this fragment of my sould reach my
Dear John,
in time?

Do you think that it could arrive tomorrow
Dear Postmaster,
if I were lucky?
Dear John
don't think I didn't get yours.
It was the fault of our
Dear Postmaster
that you didn't get it back straight away,
if only it were to be: the very next day,
as I had yours.

"Venus" Linocut Print

Linocut print 2 /3 (so far). Approx 30 x 30 cm.

In my art class at school we have been creating artworks that revolve around the human body. One task we have had to complete recently is designing our own simple linocut prints of a size of approx 30 square cm (1 square foot); obviously featuring the body or body parts.

I researched Linocut printing on Wikipedia and apparently it's a modern and cheaper adaptation of the comparatively ancient woodcut printing. So there you go. It's an altered ancestor.

I'm truly sorry that this has nothing to do with one of my beloved oldies, it's simply that at a time like this - one when I've got no inspiration - when I still want to participate in IMT I have to twist things a bit. I think this printmaking exercise has really combatted my creative block.

I love lino printing now. It's awesome fun. The designing, carving the block, inking and printing. Well. I love it all except for the cuts I've gotten on my hands from my own stupidity at times. Hem-hem. I really want to keep making lino prints. I'm going to Eckersley's to buy my own pieces of linoleum and some carving tools, block ink and rollers. AND good paper, of course.

This is one of the best prints I've gotten thus far from the linocut I've designed. Print number 2 / 3... thus far. It's inspired by the Venus di Milo.

Experimentation...

Ink pen, charcoal and graphite in VAPD

I have just been so lazy lately with drawing and art lately. I've had some really good things in terms of inspiration over the past few weeks, but as soon as I put pencil to paper I just lose it.
I'm lacking energy in everything: art, guitar, school, exercise. Especially school & exercise. I've been sick 3 weeks in May alone - from 2 or 3 different illnesses - and I feel so bored and lethargic and fat. I've only been to school 4 days over those 3 weeks, and I haven't been to the gym in a month or so. That's BAD. I had a viral cold and my monthlies for a week and a half, was on antibiotics and then just as I was starting to get better I got a tummy bug that started from my little cousin - and it's been attacking the whole family.

Basically, this afternoon I decided I was going to combat this artistic impairment. I told myself: just draw something. Muck around with mediums and texture and imagery. It doesn't matter what you freakin' do. JUST DO SOMETHING.

This isn't good by any standards. I just thought I'd post it to keep motivating myself. SO: I am soldiering on. Which is technically kind of a play on IMT's theme of "warrior" this week. I know. Tacky. But oh well.

Petals

For IMT this week we have been given the theme "Petals".

Burial

It is pure coincidence that I took photographs - not dissimilar to the one above - two days ago. I found that after the heavy, late-Autumn rains of the weekend, on Tuesday many of the developing flowers in our yard were virtually dead. I picked this one of the ground and decided to give it a "sea burial" in our pool.

Dead Bird of Paradise flower - willow & compressed charcoal, white pastel, graphite on paper

It is also with this theme that I have reflected on the subject, and just how petals - and, naturally, flowers - are used in my art. Flowers are great symbolically. They represent everything about women: how strong we are, how delicate we can be, how charming we are, how memorable we are.

The charcoal drawing above was done at the ArtCastle workshop I attended in April. It is of a decaying Bird of Paradise flower: a flower that has such unique petal structure - something which is even more fabulous when it's a bit on the dead side.

For more flower-inspired art, check out my deviantArt account.

Family

Graphite in VAPD. "Dishes". Sorry about the glare :)

IMT: Family
I think that one of my favourite things to express in my art is gender roles and issues, specifically those involving women. And of course women face the issue of having a family, and then there is the problem of her role in the family.

I think that this is an attack on the ancient views of what a women should be: a beauty queen who can cook, clean, and will make babies and silently raise them - all without protest. Nothing more and nothing less. No thoughts, no opinions, no discussion. This image depicts the strong woman as she sees herself, but with the added voids that our grandfathers and great-grandfathers would have seen.

I completed this drawing about a week ago, but I feel it is very much appropriate for the theme of "Family".

Just for the record:
Personally, I have nothing against stay-at-home wives and mothers, so long as it was HER decision and she knows that she is able to do whatever she wants - without being ruled over by a dictatoral husband.

I'm actually rather pleased today because I received my school VAPD diary mark - which is a form of assessment - during today's art lesson. I got 93/100 :)

Venus Figurine

B & 4B pencil in VAPD

This week's Inspire Me Thursday prompt is "Umbrella".

Now, being the person that I am, I instantly thought of "Umbrella Terms" for some reason. I thought about what I understood this particular phrase to mean, and after doing a little research I found that I was correct. An "umbrella term" is a word used to describe a collective of similar objects or phenomena.

Being a member of the iGeneration - or Gen Y - I was bound to use Wikipedia for my "research". That's when I stumbled across a link and an umbrella term for a range of miniature prehistoric statues that depicted obese or pregnant women - "The Venus Figurines".

This drawing is an image not disimilar to any of the Venus Figurines. It too depicts the primal beauty of a voluptuous or pregnant female. This is an 'umbrella image', if you will.

Push

Inspire Me Thursday's prompt this week is "Push". Here is a photograph I took, and a few thoughts...

Pushing For War

Why is it that after society has witnessed 2 World Wars and thousands of other harrowing battles - in rapid succession, too - that we still push for bloodshed when our nations dispute. Is it still patriotic? Is it still viewed as being romantic? Or is it still just the idea of asserting one's power?

I appreciate what my country's men have done for me, but only when there was an actual threat, when Australia was really in peril. Happy ANZAC Day, all the same.

Earth Mama

Watercolour pencil in VAPD, A4 size

Inspired by the IMT prompt: "Green". There's a little bit of glare from the scanner.

I know, strange interpretation.

And a strange prompt, actually. All these events in regards to the environment have been popping up in my life lately, and all within a period of less than five days:

Cleaning my room (well, that was a conscious decision) and consequently filling garbage bag after garbage bag with paper for recycling; a random entry for the Waste As Art competition through the mail, and then IMT has a prompt that in honour of Earth Day that will be occuring this week (April 22). I honestly never knew it was going to be Earth Day this coming Wednesday, which is why I am quite freaked out.

I wonder what the world has in store for me with all these hints.

Old Spice

Old Spice - Mixed Media (watercolours, newspaper and pen & ink on paper)

This piece looks at people stuck in their particular little ways, and how this can ultimately impact on a person's perception of reality. The haystack and silo are drawn over newspaper which notes that this man is more worried about his crops and rural way of life than, say, politics and other current affairs. And of course he just spits any-bloody-where.

It's called "Old Spice", to keep in with the current IMT theme. I can just imagine him slapping on his deodrant every morning, but no shower, of course.

Scratched (finished)

Scratched (mixed media on canvas, 12 x 12 ")

Ta-Dah! The finished product and once again my camera just doesn't do it justice. I like to feel it's got a little bit of IMT inspiration, Peeling Paint was this week's prompt. So, this isn't peeling, but scratching.

Jammed-In Breakfast

"Jammed-In Breakfast" - watercolour pencils on paper

This is the first prompt that I've responded to by Inspire Me Thursday, and right at the end of the week, mind you. This is one of the first works I've done without a concept in, well, ages. Any still life work I've done before (ie: my Vase Series) has had alot of symbolism involved. This is also one of the first pieces I've done in watercolour pencils. Much less fiddly than the tubes of paint, that's for sure.

I'm rather disappointed about the way this scan has turned out. The purple stripes on the tablecloth aren't meant to be purple at all, but a lovely Prussian blue. Damn it. The rest of it is pretty much right though.