Painting days.

Taking a writing break day this afternoon. My 'alter ego' had a half-day working this morning; I came home to homemade lunch (thanks to my wonderful husband), a nice cup of tea and 85% dark chocolate. (Well, a couple of cups of tea actually.) 

The back door is open and there is an absolutely glorious breeze wafting in. There is the earthy smell of the wet garden and deliciously cool air. Somewhere in the area someone has their wood fire going. I can hear the varying voices of at least four different types of birds as they play in the bottle brush out back. The sun has finally chased away the fog, of the past few days. I love this weather. It recharges my batteries. 

Once caffeinated to an appropriate level, I took to my painting again. For my new readers, you can read more about it in Painting Prose, Been Painting and Fashioning a Scroll and a Short Story. I find the painting relaxing and perfect for when I am trying to let research and plot ideas to just percolate through my subconscious, allowing the words to form on their own accord. 

Last night, I managed to apply most of the gold for the acanthus leaves and did some shading. Today I will inspect the damage, as the light was fading last night. Today I tackled the miniature (portrait). This is for a 'peerage' scroll for a historical re-creation group that I have been a member for almost twenty years. I have only added part-pictures as I do not want to preempt the surprise of those receiving it!

  
  

I will post full pictures when they have been handed out.  Just some pretty gold filagree type fine painting to do on the minature and it is done!

Painting Prose

It has been a busy day. I was back writing (or re-writing more accurately) my short story A Piece of Time. It has to be posted within the next two days, so the deadline nerves are looming. I have just finished printing it out for the final proof read. It is the most 'mundane', non-fantasy/non-speculative fiction piece that I have written so far. 

The whole project has been a learning experience; I had a lot more issues with writers' block on this one. I have a myriad of ideas that would take it on a more speculative fiction slant. I had to curb the urge to go in that direction. As a result, I have discovered that I definitely prefer the fantasy/ speculative genre.

Having spent most of the day writing, re-writing and editing I decided to take a break from prose and do some painting. As you have probably read, in Been Painting, What to do on a Wet Saturday and Scribey Stuff, I have been working on a matching pair of scrolls for a re-enactment group. Today I started on the second scroll. 

The flora and fauna are now complete and the scroll is drying, ready for both to have the gold added for the acanthus leaves and the portrait to be finished. I will leave you with some pictures ...

Been Painting....

I am taking a few days break from writing to finish off some painting I had promised to do. If you want to see some of it on the go, there are pics and discussion in What to do on a Wet Saturday and Scribey Stuff.

Today, I started painting the animals and flowers and vines. I used a medium green for the vines, then highlighed with a yellow and used a darker green for shadow and leaf veins. The flowers are red, orange and white. The strawberries are not finished and need highlighting, as do some of the red flowers.

I had the most fun painting the animals which are based on differing medieval manuscript appearances of them. There are three levels of colour, raw umbra mixed with a light yellow as it was a tad too dark, there is a light yellow and a 'mix of the lighter raw umber and light yellow' to make the median colour.

This leaves the acanthus leaves (the spikey curly leaves that have not been painted as yet. I am toying with making them gold with some shading, to lighten the project.

Then there is the matching scroll to paint!

 

x

Fashioning a Scroll and a Short Story

Wednesday was a busy day. Firstly, there was some housework was finished. Once the domestic chores were done, I could work on some things that were more fun. (My mother always said I had to finish my chores and homework first).

I have been procrastinating. Yes, I admit it. I have mentioned a scroll that I have been working on in my post The Makings of an Almost Period Patent of Arms.  I had finished the pencil sketch  and inked up the design, almost two weeks ago. Following several practices, I decided I really should 'bite the bullet' and finish the calligraphy. Calligraphy makes me nervous. If I make a mistake at this point, I have to redo the entire scroll. Or, in this case, the matching pair. It is like getting the nerve to take the first cut on expensive material. What if I screw it up?!

After a cup of tea, I finally found the courage and spent two hours writing the calligraphed text with a nib pen. I am now waiting for the two items to dry and I will have to do a little touching up. It was nerve wracking but finally it is complete. I am leaving this project for a few days now, so I can recover. However, the next phase is the painting. I love the painting. Such fun!!!

Project two: 

I have a few more short stories I am hoping to complete this month, all being well in the creative department. I had a quick look over An Eye for Detail. Did a quick edit and plan to return to it this weekend for final editing as it is due on the 20th. 

While I was catching up on some television during my break, I caught a really, really bad conspiracy documentary. It was actually quite entertaining and proved to be a great relaxation tool (probably not what the maker had intended though). There was one line that caught my imagination. Then a random sentence from a bit of research sparked an idea to match up with that line... 

An hour of research, a few hours of writing later and I have just finished 1117 words of the first draft of a short story titled Fashioned in Black. Hopefully this can be molded into something useful. If so, this is earmarked for one of the open themed short story competitions due at the end of the month.  

Organising and Collating and Tigers - oh my!

I have so much on my plate right now. I have 3 commissions - all in the creative phase, one short story on final edits, three independant ideas, two short stories I am hoping to finish in this month, up to four next month, as well as two scrolls for my re-enactment group. Time for some slowing down and organising what needs to be done by when...

Now an hour later and I have a list of competitions and magazine 'call' deadlines that I would like to complete. There are twelve in all. Eek! They vary from one thousand to five thousand words in preferred length. As I mentioned yesterday, I have three story ideas already on the boil. Two are independent of the above list. The real challenge is to come up with something fresh and new for each individual story. Though I really love the open themes, I like the challenge in creating a story to a set theme. This could actually prove useful with the number of stories I wish to attempt over the past few months. 

Though not as gut-wrenching as the book culling process or the story editing process, I have had to make some decisions today. Gone (for now) is a story I have been looking forward to. It will not fit any of the soon -to-be-due themes and I will definately need longer than the allotted word limit for the others. However, the idea will continue to bubble in the background so all is not at a loss for it. One competition I would like to enter, may not happen. It is one of the longer ones (at up to five thousand words) but is due at the end of the month. I have an idea for it but if I cannot get it finished, edited and polished in time, I will not enter it. As this is an annual competition,  I can always work on it for next year. 

After a hiatus, I can also finally get cracking at two original design scrolls. I have mentioned these in a previous blog, in April, but had to wait until some details were finalised. Now that they have been, I can continue. However, I will need to find a light table that I can borrow, or use the 'old tape on the window on a sunny day' trick. Look for future posts on guache, calligraphy and ink work in the near future. I have three weeks to complete this project. The design work is done so it is just a matter of applying it. 

The tigers?

They could appear in one of the short stories I have planned... but that would be telling... 

It is New T-shirt Time!

After a few days of sad news and irritating allergies, I needed some art therapy. I needed to design a new t-shirt! Designing and drawing helps me concentrate on the beauty of things and is cathartic. Creating things soothes my soul. 

As I have been concentrating on some award scrolls recently, I have been on a historical bent. This one was based on celtic designs of knotted animals, that can be found on Celtic crosses and in illuminations,. It was used for an old fanzine/ apazine contribution called 'Off the Artboard' of which I have blogged before. This version was mimicking a carved stone with pastel colours that can be seen in various illuminations, including The Book of Kells.

some examples can be at: 

• http://guriguriblog.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/kellsdecoratedinitial.jpg 
• http://www.art-imagery.com/cat.php?id=m&b=kells. specifically
  http://www.art-imagery.com/images/kells_f191v1_M.jpg
  (Book of Kells, VII Century, Page (Folio): 191v , initial letter M with animal heads)
• http://www.art-imagery.com/images/kells_121v_D_bird.jpg
• http://www.art-imagery.com/images/kells_247v1_lions_V_Q_D.jpg

I wanted to choose colours that were similar to those used, but also of a different colour palette to my previous t-shirt designs - for those of you who want something different. 

You can find the design at Redbubble: Off the Artboard 2: Celtic.

Which colour t-shirt do you prefer this design on?

The makings of an almost period Patent of Arms.

I call it an 'almost period' Patent of Arms, as it this is almost like an unpaid commission for an individual, playing at re-creating Medieval and Renaissance times, living in a modern world. They have modern ideas and sensibilities. They have not grown up in the past, with all of the the ideas and cultural references that would have been everyday, say in the 1400s. So no matter how much I wish to recreate a perfectly accurate Award Scroll, by definition I am starting with a conundrum. A scroll is a rolled piece of parchment. What I am recreating is a modern document suitable for framing, to celebrate an achievement in a modern-day club, in the style of a six hundred plus old piece of scribe work. 

Yet, despite this, I find the whole process very fulfilling. Deciding on a style and designing and then creating, a homage to it. Firstly, I like to get an idea of the recipient, the colours they favour, any favourite images or totems (animals or plants etc), and whether they have a preferred era they like to 'play in'. This can cover from early, say Saxon, to late Elizabethan.   I need to get the feel of the form of the images, the layout, the colours and style of writing (calligraphy). This can only be done by looking at as many different versions that I can find.  Like most of my artistic ventures into a modern 'scroll' or 'patent of arms', it starts with research. Lots of research. 

Yesterday, I flipped  through a pile of my calligraphy/ illumination books and a few copies of Books of Hours, that I have at hand. I also trolled through the internet, trying to find a specific picture, that I KNOW I had seen somewhere. I did not find the specific one I was thinking of, but did find some adequate substitutes to get me started.

This project does have a few constraints, one of which is that it needs to be done in a short time. For this reason, I have decided to make it smaller than I usually do. Thus, I do not have to rush to fill a larger space. I would not be happy having to rush the painting portion as this is my favourite part and I do want to give my best effort for the recipients. This  also means that the calligraphy portion will cover less area - a bonus - as this does require more effort on my part. The standard script/wording also requires truncating, due to the smaller space available. This is still a work in progress.

The day ended with a definite size and basic layout which now requires a decision on the final decoration. The colours are mostly decided upon. I have sent a draft of the shorter version of the wording, after some help of friends, with possible translations.

I leave you with the layout and will elaborate, at another time, when more progress has been made on this project.