Pop Goes the Artist!

This is actually one of the later projects from my art class first semester of last year, but I never posted it because I didn’t have a good way of photographing it. I ended up scanning each half (it’s on two pieces of paper) and then splicing them together in IrfanView, but it didn’t work very well, as you can see. The aim of the project was to make a comic strip (in the loosest definition of the word), meeting a variety of compositional requirements (multiple panels, cropping, zooming in, etc). There didn’t need to be a story, dialogue, etc. It was, I believe, the first time we were allowed to use a colors other than black and white, which was exciting. It’s done in markers on two sheets of Bristol board, taped together on the reverse side. (Click here to see it big enough to read the words.)

This is my most recent calligraphy project, made as a gift for our parish priest, who is celebrating the fortieth anniversary of his ordination. I actually started it over Easter break, but I finished it up this morning. The Bible verse I used is one he’s sort of taken as his motto, so it was an obvious choice. The colors and decoration were more arbitrary. I’m reasonably pleased with the way it turned out, but I think it’s obvious that my lettering has a long way to go. The lines are not actually crooked–or rather they are, but only along the tops, since my letters apparently tend to get shorter as I progress down a line. I should work on that. (4×6″ on cream-colored paper. The letters are drawing ink, the leaves are thinned acrylic.)

Finally finished the two calligraphy projects I’ve been thinking about/planning for at least a month. I went home to my paints this weekend and in an astonishing burst of inspiration and productivity, produced not one, but two finished pieces.

This is the piece I did for my church’s silent auction later this month. “St. Patrick’s Breastplate” is actually a very long prayer, so I just picked the verse that most people have heard before. It has a nice symmetry about it as well. My inspiration for this piece was straight out of the book of Kells, which I consider the pinnacle of monastic manuscript achievement. (I’m not kidding. It’s amazing. I have the whole thing on CD-ROM.) I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out, although I think I could have done a better job with the alignment of the text on the right side and with making the letters more Celtic. On the whole, however, I think it was a success and I’m particularly fond of the capital C. It’s double-matted in a lovely tan with black, which looks much better than it sounds. (watercolor and ink on watercolor paper, 10×8″)

This is the piece I did for my old middle school. I know I had originally decided on the Anima Christi, which is a beautiful prayer, but it’s very long and I just wouldn’t have had time to do it justice. I think this works just as well though, considering that “Thy kingdom come” may as well be the school’s mantra. When I went there, we had to write “TKC” (for “thy kingdom come”) at the top of all of our papers, and as far as I know that hasn’t changed, so this will (hopefully) be a hit. On a more technical note, I have no idea why the image is tinged slightly blue on the right side–a quirk of the scanner, I guess, but in real life the paper is heavy cream-colored pastel paper. My inspiration for this was purely medieval, in particular this incredible collection of pages from some medieval book. Click a page at random and you won’t be disappointed; they’re all pretty impressive. (Thank you, Columbia University.) This one has a double mat of red and gold, which looks pretty rockin’, I must say. (ink and acrylic gouache, 5×8″)

I’ll be eager to find out how much each of these goes for, the second one in particular. If these are a hit, I’ll probably do something with a literary, rather than religious, twist for the big library fundraiser next year. We shall see.

This is my final project for art class. The objectives were rather loose–he gave us a number of shapes we had to incorporate (breakfast cereal, neckties, and plants) and a color scheme (split complement), then told us to otherwise do whatever we wanted. This took me less than an hour, once I sat down to actually do the damn thing. It has a number of titles: “My art teacher is on crack” OR “Watch as I shamelessly copy Elizabeth Murray even though I hate her artwork” OR “Abstract art makes my brain spew dots.” Nevertheless, it didn’t turn out quite as badly as I anticipated–possibly because I went into things thinking pessimisticly. And the fact is, the lowest grade I’ve gotten so far on a project in this class is an A-, so I can do pretty badly on this and come out all right in the end. It’s Prismacolor marker on bristol board, approximately 8.5×12″

This is the front cover. I started out with an abridged (but still more than 2″ thick) copy of The Count of Monte Cristo that I bought new, because I wanted something sturdy. I found that wonderful, heavy, wrinkly gold paper and glued it over the binding, then covered everything else with this paint-ish stuff that dries into a handmade-paper-like surface. The stuff is nasty to work with–slimy and tough to manuever–but the overall effect is great. Very glad I found it. While it was still damp, I stamped the clock into it with gold ink. I wanted to try to keep the cover fairly simple since the inside was a little more ornate. This isn’t the greatest picture, either, what with the flash glare and all.
The inside. I glued all the pages together into one huge block with gel medium and used a utility knife to cut out the boxes, then painted everything, wrote and rewrote the calligraphy (no kidding, probably five or six times–and I’m still not entirely satisfied with it), painted some more, added the gold corners and the fibers. The whole thing took a really long time, a lot of agonizing about supplies (especially those $%&# gold corners), and a lot more money than I either anticipated or wanted to spend. The problem is, I’ve never done a mixed media project like this before, so I didn’t have anything lying around leftover from other things. The outside edges of the page block are painted pale, somewhat shimmery gold, which helps disguise the layers and layers of gel medium. The fibers were a later addition, but I think they really help pull it together. I’m still not entirely satisfied with the way the quote (written seperately on watercolor paper and glued in) transitions into the rest of the book. Perhaps I didn’t tint the paper heavily enough. Not sure if I’ll try and fix that or not.

This is a close-up of the clock part. I should probably add that this isn’t completely finished yet–the clock still doesn’t work. I think I lost a nut or something that it needs, but since I was about to leave for college, I wanted to at least make it look done so I could take a picture of it. Next time I’m home I’ll stick a battery in it and see if it works despite the missing piece; it might. When I glued the block of pages together, I didn’t glue them to the back cover, so it opens to allow access to the motor to change the battery and adjust the time. Also, now that I look at it more closely, I feel as though that part of the page is missing something, too.

Perhaps this is just because I’ve spent so much time planning and making this book, but it feels somehow flat to me. I don’t think it matches the “inner vision” as closely as I’m accustomed to my artwork doing. No doubt I’m being too hard on myself, since this is an unfamiliar style and collection of media, but I feel like there’s something lacking. It feels unfinished and imperfect to me. It’s probably just me, but I don’t really have any way of telling that. Maybe sometime I’ll take it to my art teacher and ask her to help me figure it out. She’s good with stuff like that and I think this book would be very much her “style” so she could probably come up with some good insights. I just don’t know.