7/10/2021
Art process issue...
July 10, 2021
ART
This issue will focus completely on art process—so don’t say I didn’t warn you. Shortly after the pandemic lockdown hit us, I switched from painting to drawing, first using graphite pencil and then ink. It’s been great working with these mostly non-messy tools on easy-to-handle paper in my small space, where I don’t have room to comfortably work on large pieces.
But when I started working with liquid (graphite) acrylic, I realized I wanted to try painting again.
Still, it takes a significant mental shift to go from drawing, for over a year, to painting; it takes some planning. Suddenly I’m thinking more about background colors and worrying about how paint textures and a wood substrate (vs. paper) will affect my still-linear approach.
I want to pick up the thread of the rule-based project(s) I’d been working on, but I had to change the rules to take into consideration the quirky qualities of paint. Also, I felt a need to break out of the grid I’d been using for the Keywords project. Working small, I tried using organic shapes to represent the units of each letter, instead of a grid. As a comparison, here is piece where each unit of a grid represents the letters of a word:
Grids are fairly easy to work with; you can use a ruler to delineate and keep everything in its place. But sometimes those straight vertical and horizontal lines feel a little constricting. In the small work below, based on the word, “touch,” each unit is rounded and organic. This is still basically a drawing—ink and marker on heavy paper:
Then I tried doing a small painting on wood. The word I picked was “lure.” Though I love the ease, quickness, and precision of drawing with pencil and ink, while making this piece I also realized that I miss the squishiness and tactile feel of paint. This is why I feel I’ll never become fully accustomed to the process of making digital art—even though I have a drawing tablet and taught myself how to use it. The feel and smell of paint (even acrylics) takes me back to childhood days when my father gave me a set of oil paints. I loved the smell!
I decided to do a “Geomancy” piece, painting on a larger wood panel (18 x 18 in). In the geomancy project, I throw dice to get the main elements of the work. I wrote the figures on the back of the panel to document the results, in this case: 1) Cauda draconis, 2) Conjunctio, 3) Laetitia, and 4) Albus. If you’re interested, there are plenty of sites with information about the symbolism of these figures, for example, in Wikipedia.
Process photo of the panel after I painted the background colors:
Below, a section of the unfinished work in-progress, which I’m calling “Crossroads” (for the Conjunctio “X” figure that was the result of the second dice throw).
There’s still some very strong linear/drawing elements in this but I think that will be the case for all the Geomancy pieces; it’s just the nature of the beast.
Compare it to an earlier one in this series:
Tomorrow I’ll be diving back into editing and tutoring, and it will be busy in my nonprofit realm, too. I recently received the good news that the grant our nonprofit applied to has been approved! Gotta seize those moments and appreciate them.
That’s it for now. Stay safe and be good to yourself . . .