Illuminated Text

I've been working on the project I started talking about in my last post. I don't really like the text I wrote but I think it works really well as a text to illuminate. So far I've only done work on one spread - I have a feeling the book will be four spreads, 8 pages. I'm really liking where it's going, though. I have been borrowing the general gist of the decorative aspects from manuscript plates I've found in the books I have on illuminated manuscripts. I sort of want to go back and re-do the initial letter with gold leaf - that was my original intention but I don't have tools to do a small guilding job like that. Hopefully a trip to Michaels will solve that problem.

Here are some pictures of the work in progress -









All I want to do is work on it! Wonderfully inconvenient though, it takes a long time to do anything on it, and without a doubt a very certain calm and focused mindset (which is not always easy to come by...)

I'm working with acryla gouache for the color and a higgins calligraphy ink and flexible nib pen for the text

Also, check out my mixtape blog, i just uploaded a new tape chock full of 80's pop bombs and i bet you'd dig it!

New Work - Today

So, I finished classes a week and a half ago and my productivity has dropped. Blame it on the beautiful weather, blame it on the swine flu, blame it on gucci mane. Either way, I've been stuck but that doesn't mean I get to stop creating - such is the life of an 'art student'. My review board is 7 days away and while I'm happy with the amount of work I have to share, there could always be more. So, I took a trip to the art supply store hoping to find some inspiration (and see that wicked cute boy that works behind the reg...) and I did. Bought three of those awesome cradled plywood boards (artist & craftsman supply sells them for so much less than blick!), came home, got out the gouache and got to work. Hours later, this is what I made. I really like them.





A little difficult to photograph since they're quite light... and the setting sun isn't the best illuminator. Gouache on 4x4 cradled plywood boards. All of the colors were mixed from a super limited palette.


<3 Spring <3

Fantasy Creatures (old work)

black bear

fireowl

baby ratt

when we meet

Was looking through my chest of books today and remembered these gouache drawings - done in maybe 2006(?) - ink and gouache on notebook paper (great notebooks from Bob Slate, numbered pages!) I was never sure how I felt about these - but I couldn't stop doing them even though they took forever. I ended up using them for an edition in one of Anne Pelikan's classes that I TA'd for - the title of the 'book' was After Four Hours and Photocopies as I had spent four hours and many photocopies trying to make a xerox book to distribute to the class. With no luck or inspiration I ended up scanning the drawings, throwing them in a square in InDesign, printing them out, pasting them back to back and making some 'books' to hand out to the class the next day.

I'd like to do more work with gouache.