Monday, September 6, 2010

Before my Vacation

Here is the set of images before my two week vacation in Italy and France.  

The two image above are small drawings.  I am using a repeat of the triangle, square and circle in each, with various horse images, at least in the image on the right side.  



The image on the left I choose to just repeat the head of the horse, and weld it to various legs.  There is nothing automatically correct however in how the images are composed.  The study on the right side is rough, but important because I incorporated some of this style in later drawings. 




The study on the left side is very much like what I did last week.  The study on the right I started to take a new direction.  In this study I have started to change up the scale of the horses from smaller and full body, to just the full head which you can see in the upper right hand side.  The repeat element here are the arcs through out the image.  


The last two studies I did are above.  The first is a simple study placing the abstracted horses on the right hand side of the paper, and again changing the scale of the images.  The last study I considered the most important study of all the drawings of the week.   On the left I have stacked three horses, with one clock.  The middle horse has an angry eye, which has its origination from the clock.  The upper horse is also tied and originates from one of the hands of time.  That image weighs against FIVE horses, three clocks, a triangle all set upon a massive square.  This highly structured design represents set time.  The horses and single clock coming from the left to the right represents rouge time, or a "black swan" like event.  

It is a complex composition that uses many elements from all of my studies.  This is simply not something I would have been able to compose even six months ago.  

Out of everything I have done over the past year, this image really makes a huge leap in composition, design and depth.   It feels like it is miles ahead of my earlier work called the Ascension of Time.  It has numbers ( 3, 5 ) shapes ( triangle, square, circle), and life ( the horses ) and meaning ( I am showing the viewer a philosophical concept of time and rouge events). 

So, I have taken this final study a step further into a study painting.  



This is the painting, but in photoshop I have removed the color and just done it in Sepia for a very different effect.  But the painting is in color as see below.  


I added the ball of gold in the upper left hand corner for force.  It is composed in spirals which pass through the eye of the middle horse and into the formation of fixed time.  This painting is done with gold leaf on canvas, and phaleo blue paint.  I also used iron mica for shading in the main images.  

It is no mistake that the painting is lighter on the left hand side than the right.  I am using the darker colors of the right to draw the eye.  Plus, the images on the left side are meant to be less solid in color than the set time images on the right hand side.  



Here is an antiqued image of the same painting.  

So, this week I did several studies on repeated elements, and developed one of these studies into a full painting taking the concept the next step in evolution.  My fascination with the nature of time, which shows up in many of my pieces, has returned with a force.  

As please as I am with this study, it is still a study and I believe there is room for improvement upon this composition, and its execution as a painting.  

Now, two weeks in Europe checking out Picasso, Luzatti, Matisse, Chagall, and many others.  



Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Iphone and the Gods

Here is the process I took to get to this image.  It is a relatively small study, and not as "clean" as I would like to see in a final production.

First, I laid down a layer of copper and gold leaf, applied a drawing ground, and then proceeded to apply  the writings. 
This is my base layer. 


Here is the end result of that first process that took about 3 hrs of work, using a bamboo pen, and black ink. 


I applied two layers of transparent glazes.  One layer was a transparent gold, and the second was a turquoise blue.  


I sketched in the drawing, started to apply layers of paint, slowly.  As you can tell the Iphone at first was transparent.  I kept the man worshiping or honoring the Iphone transparent as a way of subtle contrast of importance.  I am saying that the Iphone is actually more real that the man to the left. 


Here is the final version of the study.  I used zinc white, but heavy, applied on the man to give more contrast, but tried to keep him just transparent enough to allow the writings on the base layer to still be seen in the image. 

 
And this is a small study.  The image size is 16x20, and the first time I have used canvas to create on of these gold leaf paintings.  A larger study, or final piece would allow far more detail.