Making “The Great Library” Part 3

The Outside

Having worked out the inside of my story box (see here and here) I started thinking about the outside. Initially I thought about just using text from the excerpt but decided to continue with the idea of the box actually being a simplified physical representation of the library.

Architecture of Ancient Alexandria

An internet search failed to come up with any drawings or artists’ impressions of the building which housed the Great Library of Alexandria of antiquity. In fact, the library collection was quite possibly spread across a number of buildings. I decided to look for images of important civic buildings from the time in Alexandria to use as a guide. I was lucky enough to find this book, and to be able to borrow it via an inter-library loan. The book proved fascinating and I was sorry I was only able to have it for a fortnight.

I decided to base my library on the temples built during the reign of the Ptolemaic period. (Winterson mentions Ptolemy in our extract). The feature I was most concerned about was the column capitals. I know very little about architecture from this period, but I do know enough to know that if I made a mistake with this, someone more knowledgeable (perhaps even JW) would know!

Fortunately this reference told me all I needed to know: the columns needed to be straight (not bulbous) with “composite capitals”. This refers to the fact that more than a single plant was depicted on the capitals (e.g. not just papyrus or palm, but both).

Creating the “Cover” Image 

Edfu Temple from the time of Ptolemy III- XII (public domain image)

Above you can see a photo of a temple from the Ptolemaic period and below is my original drawing before processing and adding effects. In the end, I kept decorative details to a minimum, but it was important to me to have the basic architectural forms right.

 

As this image was to form the equivalent of the cover, I needed to include a title. I decided to use the “title stone” below as a layer over the whole image.

I used this online tutorial on Moe’s Realm as a guide to develop the effect of text engraved into stone. For the most part I followed it exactly, and then at the end just tweaked things a little until I was satisfied.

Below: the two images with opacities adjusted to my satisfaction.

Using Instagram 

The final step was to transfer my drawing to my iPhone so that I could process it using Instagram. Unfortunately, the Instagram app is not available for non-Apple devices, and if you have an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch you probably already know it. However, you may not realize that you can also use Instagram to process any jpg file, just like this one of mine.

Unfortunately I’m not fluent in “Apple-talk” but as it is done in iTunes, I imagine it is very similar to the method I’ve outlined below.

The steps on a windows computer are:

1. connect your device to your computer  
2. open iTunes
3. open your device
4. click on “Photos”
5. Tick “Sync photos from” and then select folder from the drop down menu
6. then click on “Sync” at the bottom right of the screen
7. once the sync is finished, open Photos on your iPhone, iPad etc and you’ll find your images in your Photo Library

 

And voila! special effects courtesy of Instagram.

(Also, I want to extend a BIG THANK-YOU to the talented Azirca over on Speak Without My Voice who so kindly shared this facility with me!)

Making “The Great Library”, Part 1: Inside

From my first reading of the Art & Lies extract by Jeanette Winterson, I wanted to depict the boys in their eyries.

Initially, I planned to make a varied edition of altered books and I progressed as far as buying Condensed Readers Digest books in sufficient numbers, before I realized the difficulty of hand-carving hundreds of pages over and over to make the edition. Fortunately, another structure came to mind.

The Structure

At Ed Hutchins’ Single Sheet Structures workshop, a couple of years ago, I learned about the story box. It’s a simple structure that can be very effective when it supports the concept, and in this case it was perfect. With the image of the eyries in my head, I plunged into working on the inside of the box.

Inside

For this edition, I really wanted the warmth of a hand-pulled print, despite having more experience with digital printmaking. Having only made a couple of etchings before, I chose to do the inside image of the library as a drypoint on a Perspex (acrylic) plate, 30cm x 42cm. I did not want to make a large acid-etched plate in case it wasn’t successful.

Below you can see the plate now.

To inscribe it I used two drypoint tools, which you can see too.The one with the wooden shaft is an inexpensive diamond point from Dick Blick. The diamond makes an incredible difference in the pressure you have to apply. I’m not sure whether this particular tool will last very long, but if not I’ll certainly be replacing it with another diamond point. If anyone has a favourite tool for drypoint they recommend, please do let me know.

Digital Background

I found this lovely photo (above) of the book stacks at the British Library by Steve Cadman on flickr. It was the inspiration for the colours I initially prepared for the background of my print, using acrylic inks (below left).

Right: In progress, showing lightened areas in two places

I scanned the background and planned to create areas where the eyries would be positioned using the “lighting effects” in Photoshop. Obviously, this darkens those areas of the print that you haven’t chosen to be “lightened”.

In case you haven’t used this, you just go to:

Filter>Render>Lighting Effects.

There are a lot of options, but a good place to start is with either Omni or Spotlight (found in the Light Type window). From there you can play about with intensity and narrow or wide focus. It maybe useful to adjust the “exposure” and/or “ambience”, which can be found under Properties. I’ve found these to be the most fundamental controls to achieving simple but effective lighting effects. Beyond that, you can spend hours playing to see what can be done.

Combining the Digital and Drypoint Prints

In total I created five “lightened eyries”, which showed up quite nicely, but the background was now looking rather dark and dull. I altered the saturation and colour balance until the background printed on the Rives BFK printmaking paper to my taste. As this isn’t a paper for inkjet printing, there aren’t any colour profiles online, so I had to make numerous small test prints on the actual paper in order to see the colours.

.

Left is the final background, as the file appears on-screen. Right, a scan of the artists’ proof (drypoint over digital background on Rives BFK).

More next time!

The end of an era

I’ve decided to post an excerpt from my journal rather than re-write the content for the blog.

I came to this decision partly because I’ve been a bit unwell, and it saves energy to do it this way, but also because posting the hand-written entry suits the subject matter, I think.

If you click on the page, you should see a larger view, which you will be able to read. It’s unedited, and I’m sure this shows when you read it, but hopefully you’ll be able to overlook its imperfections, and take it for what it is.

When I visited the house during the week I was amazed to see buds on the plum tree in the backyard already!

Room with a beach view

This is the view from the balcony of our unit. We are at the beach for 10 days. Will post again when I get home. Meanwhile here are some more photos, all taken from either the front or back balcony.

Detail shots

With the heat we've been experiencing here this past week, I haven't been too well, so progress on my book has been slow. I have started printing the first digital pages, but that involves a lot of colour checking and testing, and I haven't really progressed since last Monday.

However, I am finding how beneficial Photoshop is for this type of project. Combining the layers function and with adjustments to the opacities allows me to move imagery backwards and forwards, and experiment with potential page orders. This satisfies some of my urge to keep up the momentum, but of course I'd rather be working with the actual pages.

Below are some detail shots of different orderings of pages. These are just tests - it may be that none of these are in the final book, in just this way. In case you haven't guessed, quite a number of the pages will be vellum, and therefore transparent. In my next post I'll write a bit about why I made this choice.

Exploring text as image

Life's been full and as ever, challenging since my last post. I attended an orientation to the facilities at Impress Printmaker's Studio and am now eligible to book time there to use the equipment. It's the same studio I mentioned in previous posts, and they have a UV box for exposing solarplates and a number of presses. I'm quite excited about the possibilities this opens up for me, and the convenience of the studio, being only 10 minutes away from my home is wonderful. I've heard on the grapevine that they are thinking of re-locating to larger premises, which would be good for them but I hope it doesn't happen too soon.

In preparation for my first session at Impress, I am working on images to expose for a book. I've been using Photoshop to experiment with ordering and layout - ah, what a wonderful tool PS can be! Here's a peek at two possible pages - it's just a rough "sketch" .




As well as pages based on imagery, I've been exploring some text-based pages. I love constructivist, dada and futurist art with their use of typography as a graphic element, and of course artists in these movements were the first in the 20th century to produce artists books. This is one of my favourite examples of this type of work.

Ruth Laxson is a book artist who is a great source of inspiration to me. She began her press, Press 63 Plus, at age 63 and established herself as much respected in the field. Her books expressed a real playfulness with text and are reminiscent of concrete poetry.

Playing around with text in Photoshop (which, by the way, makes exploring that kind of artwork so much easier) I have decided that I really want to develop my own style with text. The beauty of the constructivists is that their artwork looks deceptively simple, but that is the way of all good design. Of course, it never is that simple to achieve the dynamism and perfect composition required. Like Ruth Laxson, I hope to make the visual impression of the text echo the sense of the words. I came up with a number of alternatives - the one below is the one I find most satisfying.

"Self" - update

As well as working on a grant application over the past week, I've been working on the ceramic concertina book for this installation. Above you can see the first stage of the process as I documented it. This is the clay portrait made by transferring an inkjet image to wet clay on day 1.

I've been testing different ways of converting a colour image to black and white in Photoshop. I recently bought a book by Scott Kelby, and I've been slowly working through it. It's written in a very direct way, specifically for photographers, to help them learn how to achieve the look they are after. It's called "The Photoshop CS2 book for digital photographers" and it gives four different ways to create a black and white image. None of them is particularly hard but I only knew one of them and they all create slightly different effects.

I'm still undecided whether to use black and white or sepia images in the book, but I hopefully it will be clearer when I get my porcelain tests back from feffakookan. (She is popping them in one of her firings this week). It's crazy but I so enjoyed making those little test slabs and I can't wait to get my hands back into the clay! In fact, I'm so desperate I've decided that if it's too hot in the garage (my ceramic studio) I'm just going to bring the clay inside into the air-conditioning....I never did like this carpet anyway!

Below: the last in the series

A couple of sepia versions here.

Self Portraits - wip update: Trust the process

It seems I've been working on these self portraits for ages, and as I look back at past blog entries here and here, I can see it has been underway for 6 months. For quite some time I was struggling with the best way to present the different parts and bring it all together. I knew what I had thought of wasn't really resolved, but I had to actually see that, before I could move on.

It's hard to make a piece you know isn't really going to work, but sometimes it is important to get on with it and trust that inspiration will hit and allow you to take it where it needs to go. I find this even harder given that my energy is limited and I don't really want to waste it. Not to mention having a lack of faith in myself as an artist (I am really an occupational therapist who is pretending to be an artist and one day soon, people are going to realize this and tell me to get out and stop wasting their time).

Nevertheless, this work is one that has really shown me that the only way to make some art is to get on with making it, and work it out as you go. And I have to confess that everytime I actually stop thinking about this piece and actually work on it, significant leaps forward have happened. Will I learn from this? Probably not completely, but hopefully I'll remember this lesson a little sooner the next time I am stuck.


Above:the clay version of the self portrait after 2 days on the wall.


Above: photoshopped version


Above: further degradation

The wax version as seen here is currently being framed. When I get it back, I can move on to what is hopefully the last stage.

It's all in how you choose to view it (Artwords #52)

This is my entry for this week's Artwords challenge : Eyes. I immediately thought of different points of view and how we can have the power to change how we feel by considering things differently. I had a profound experience of that just this week.

I was visiting the blog of one of my online friends, cusp. She, like me, has cfs and her blog has links to a number of others by people with it too. I spent a couple of hours submerged in a world which I usually try very hard to avoid - please don't take offense - a world filled with cfs sufferers. I know a lot of other people find a lot of companionship and solace in support groups of people with the same condition. I am an occupational therapist and in my previous life I have run them and encouraged others to join them. But they just did not suit me.

I guess I am really lucky (and this is going to sound really strange) that my husband also has cfs. It means I have on hand someone with an intimate understanding of the condition. We can share our experiences and our feelings but at the same time we know we have to make an effort for the other - so we can't let our despair (and there can be quite a lot of despair at times) get on top of us, because we know we will just drag the other one down. It's an extremely complicated dynamic, and for the first several years we did not get it right at all. In fact, we separated for a long period, but we overcame our difficulties, and now I cannot imagine living without my "DH".

The point I am trying to make is that other than DH, I don't really "hang out" with people with cfs. My friends are the friends I had before, albeit without a few who didn't believe, weren't able to adapt to my dropping out of things etc etc. So when I encounter a group of people with cfs - reality slams me in the face. And I realize that I sometimes live in a state of semi-denial about how different from "average" my life and horizons are.

I made my choice some time ago that I need to have what I call "real world goals", even if they are small and are always subject to review. By this I mean, goals that a person who was not sick might have, like exhibiting or attempting a course. This is not always easy and sometimes probably not wise, but without them, I just become depressed. And I know now that every 2-3 years there does seem to be a period when I will need to withdraw from anything that has a "real deadline" (as distinct from one I have arbitrarily set in my head) and just relax. This is how DH lives his life too - he is a musician - so we try to organise things so that when one of has a major deadline, the other is relatively uncommitted, and can be support-person. It seems to work reasonably well for us most of the time.

However, too often I compare myself with my friends who (if they are my age) are mid-career, well-established with families and lovely homes, going for trips overseas every couple of years, or else if they are art school friends, tend to be somewhat younger, but nevertheless are exhibiting multiple times a year, going on residencies and winning grants to fund all sorts of wonderful projects.

Reading the blogs of a number of others with cfs, some who seem to be more ill than me, and others who are less ill (at the moment) reminded me of the truth of my situation. And in fact I am so lucky compared to where I have been. There was a time when I was living alone with this illness. There was a time when I was much too sick to make any art work for months. There was even a time before I realized that art could be a sustaining passion in my life. So I am thankful to those others with cfs who blog and share their experiences and insights into this situation we are all facing. Thank you for opening my eyes and making me see things as they truly are.

Links to some of the cfs-related blogs I've visited so far

Michael Nobbs

velo-gubbed legs

Liverpool Leftovers

Reading the Signs

and there are more over on the blog of my chum, cusp

Artwords #51: Botanical

Lost (in the Garden of Eden)

The title for my entry in Artwords this week comes from the fact that the original photo which is the basis of this work was taken in a place called Eden, on the south-east coast of Australia, close to the border of New South Wales and Victoria. Eden is an old whaling town on a rugged but beautiful area of coastline, and it really stays in my mind as a highlight of that trip.

We stumbled onto the town, having not heard of it before but some time later saw a special on ABC TV entitled "Killers in Eden". The following is an excerpt from the cover of the DVD.

"On the southeast coast of Australia, the town of Eden nestles along the shores of Twofold Bay. It was once a center of Australia's thriving whaling industry, in part because it lies along the migration path of baleen whales swimming northward from the Antarctic. But residents say Eden's whalers got some unusual help -- from orcas, or killer whales, that patrolled offshore.
Locals such as Elsie Severs and Alice Otten who witnessed the hunts say the orcas took the lead in the hunt, herding larger migrating whales into the bay. Once the whales were confined in the bay, the orcas would then attack their quarry to the point of exhaustion. Human whalers moved in for the final kill -- then shared the spoils with the orcas."

That story is really just a bit of scene-setting as my image obviously has nothing to do with whales. I stumbled across this bushy area by a lookout and had to stop and take some photos. The tangle of tree trunks, gnarled by the salty winds had created a natural grotto. You can see one of the original images here. I worked on the image in Photoshop, mostly using the adjustment layers and the lighting effects to create this work.

The Refinery (Artwords #47)

The Refinery
Originally uploaded by potsrme1962.

It's great to be contributing to Artwords again after an enforced break. Actually this is the first artwork I've done since returning from Melbourne nearly 2 weeks ago. The whole thing took a bit of a toll on my health and I guess I will have to factor in that sort of recovery period after each trip down this year.
Tomorrow I plan to get back to my masters work but today I took a trip to Wynnum about half an hour from my home and took some photos.
This refinery is on the way back. The whole area is full of "Jeffrey Smart" moments, as my husband pointed out. Wonderful if you like photographing industrial scenery - and I do.
Photoshop is a wonderful way for me to get my creative juices flowing again and I was even able to locate the exact spot to show you on a map on Flickr - great fun! Check it out here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/amandaw-w/450575858/

By the way, there is actually quite a bit of yellow in the sky, it just doesn't show up so well on screen.

Topic #41 - Morning

Having CFS has an interesting impact on my photography - I have very few photos taken in the morning, because I simply don't get out of the house till about midday! Hunting through my folders did reveal this one, with the foliage shadows on the washing, taken in Melbourne.

I took this photo for inspiration and was thinking about making large panels of translucent porcelain to "project" shadows onto. A lot of my earlier work revolves around shadows as you can see here and here.

I spent a lot longer than I intended trying out different ideas for this piece in Photoshop - damn computers! they gobble up your time, but they do make it easy to explore a range of options. In the end I had so much trouble selecting one as my entry that I am just going to upload a number of options and whichever comes up first will be the entry! You can visit my blog to see what else

I came up with (for those reading this on Artwords).

.

Cycles: an artist book - wip

I've spent hours on Photoshop today working on different options for this image. It will be the basis for one page of an artist book I plan to make for my masters. The working title for the book is Cycles and it will explore the cyclical nature of all life - continuing the theme of process/change. I'll probably do an inkjet transfer with the image or maybe incorporate it in encaustic. Those explorations are the next step. Once I decide for one page, then that will set the media for the book. I have chosen a flutter book format because I want the whole thing to be visible at once but also create a circle. There is a bit more work to do in PS - I'll be removing the powerlines, but otherwise I am reasonably happy with these two options. Let me know if you have a preference.

Just a short post today because I'm typing one-handed - the other one is supporting the head of my sleeping cat!

Self portraits update - more advice needed...

I want to thank all the people who took the time to leave comments or email me personally to give me some feedback on the self portraits I am working on. It was incredibly helpful and really helped me to fill in the gap that working off campus creates.

I have done a few more tests, and am posting a few more images here. One thing that came up was the idea of at least seeing some facial features in the portrait with clay. Rather than working just with layer opacity I decided to try splitting the face, as you can see on the left. I actually had a lot of fun playing with this in photoshop and trying to achieve some sense of 3-D. Of course, working with real clay and projections would look rather different. Again I would appreciate people's opinions on this. Already my husband has said it reminds him of Phantom of the Opera, which isn't an association I really want.



This is an attempt at simply using a figure and embedding that in wax. To me this lacks the emotional strength of the actual face. What do you think?
















In this piece I am exploring the use of the square in place of a figure. I think this speaks mostly about the materials and loses most of the sense of preservation or embalming associated with a human being in wax. I do love the way the fibres in the paper are visible - it looks like hair when held up to the light - and suggests some new directions to follow in the future.

Topic #38 - Memory

My entry this week is an encaustic painting. This is a medium I am very new to, so I have a lot to learn. Even so, I find working with the wax absolutely fascinating and despite the challenges it presents I experience little or no frustration.

The building up of translucent layers really lent itself to this weeks theme. To me it represents the way memories become fuzzier over time. I started off working quite intuitively, putting down layers and scratching back to reveal hidden textures; then painting more layers of wax.

After a while I started to see a theme emerging of archaic time. The textures seemed geological and the scratching back reminded me of archeological digs. There is also a flavour of the primordial soup, I think. In order to integrate the image, I overlaid some structure in the final layers. Without that, the imagery was a bit too chaotic for my eye. I do hope you can see some of the layering and detail in the enlargement, because without that some of the meaning will be lost.

I am cheating a little, by posting my entry for last week here as well. As I explained in a previous post, I just wasn't happy with it last week, but when I returned to it this week, it somehow looked a lot better! You know how it is! It really does seem to capture the mood.

This photo was taken in our driveway in Melbourne after a day of 40 deg. celsius heat. It was about 10pm and a cool change came through, with the most gorgeous cooling breeze. The temperature must have dropped about 20 degrees in an hour or so - as it can in Melbourne. These bushes were blowing about and I have of course photoshopped them, to enhance the effect.

A Painting A-Day: The Last Week

I am running a bit late with this update on my Painting-A-Day (downgraded to the much less catchy A Painting Every Second Day here) so in fairness given the time extension I have created more work - eight pieces in all. The lateness was caused by some health issues (migraines provoked by the sudden onset of summer heat here in Brisbane) and the fact that I spent the week working mostly with wax (good choice for hot weather, I hear you say!).

One thing I love about wax is that if you don't like what you've created, you can melt it down or scrape it back and hey presto! start again! The trouble is, this is a little like computers, they don't save you any time, but you can end up with a better end result - it just depends how much patience you have....I am also pretty new to using wax so there is a lot to learn - but after this I feel somewhat more confident...dipping and collage are going okay but painting, well I'm not a painter, so I've got a lot to learn.

The collage shows the works in the order they were finished, and includes two entries for Artwords and one for Illustration Friday. You can see the red paper-cut for IF in my other blog, Amanda-IF and I will do a separate post for the Artwords entry for this week - Memories.

The first piece is a page for my second artists book. You can see my first one here. It is still coming together, but is about the transience of the body. This is a Sheer Heaven transfer of the heart, encased in wax. The working title for the book is "Preserve". There is a LOT more work to be done on this, as this is the first page I've completed. I was pleased to test out my techniques though and find it came together quite well.

Next is a digital entry for last weeks Artwords, which I wasn't really satisfied with and did not end up posting. The prompt was "wind" and it's a digitally altered photo of the wind rustling the trees in our driveway in Melbourne. Looking back a week later, I actually think it captures the theme reasonably well.

Third is an attempt at a collage I've been thinking about which explores the cyclical nature of existence through the lunar cycle. I wasn't at all happy with the woman in this and re-did it, as you can see in the second last piece. This one feels more true to my aesthetic, but still needs work.

Next is my second wax box. You can see more detailed images of this on Flickr. This one is constructed entirely of Japanese lace paper. I plan to make a series of these boxes as part of my masters work so you'll be seeing more of them in future posts.

Next is a red wax collage using Sheer Heaven transfers and inlaid wax drawing. It started as an experimental page for Preserve but I doubt it will be used now. The final piece is an encaustic painting incorporating a little collage and it's my Artwords entry so you'll have to wait for the Artwords post to read about it.

The great thing about this month has been that I have created a lot, explored themes and techniques I've had in mind for literally months, and most pleasingly, been really well and energetic through it all. Now if I could just manage to sustain this level of output, I think I might have a chance of finishing my MFA....

So the plan for the next month is to get working on masters pieces. I have scheduled a visit to Melbourne for late March and I want to have plenty of samples to take down with me. Tomorrow will be a big planning day. Over all, a great start to the year.

A-Painting-A-Day: Taking Stock So Far

I'd love to be able to say that it was my intention all along to do a big end of month summary of this Painting-A-Day exercise - but the truth is I've been so caught up making art that I just haven't had a chance to update this blog.

The positive of this is that it means the month is going really well. There have been a few changes to the Painting-A-Day "rules" - when you're making it up as you're going along, this is not surprising! First of all, it doesn't have to be a painting. In fact it doesn't absolutely have to be 2-D, although I have tried to stick to this in the main. However, I think that all but 2 works do include paint! Secondly, the daily was never really realistic, unless I wanted to make all the works very spontaneous and quick. Instead I have gone for at least 4 per week and made it to 5 once. By taking it a little more slowly, I think I can get some good "starters" going, things I can return to and look at developing in the future. It also gives me a chance to try out a few different techniques I've thought of or read about in the past 12 months. So the collage above shows pictures of all the works created so far.

Week 1

The first week I made four works, two collages and two mixed media drawings. None of these really work but I did try out some new techniques, including sgraffito using wax pastels and Jonathon Talbot transfer technique which I've mentioned in earlier posts. I've been focussing on developing imagery that I may use in my masters work and there are lots of "bits" that I think I can work with here.

The big disappointment for me was the sgraffito. It's a technique I'm familiar with in ceramics, and while it worked, I just didn't really like the effect - but that may be due to the multicoloured surface I created - you can see it here. It just looks lazy and messy to me.

Week 2

This week was my most productive so far. I was still in an exploratory mood despite my dissatisfaction with the sgraffito, so I tried my hand at a variety of media and techniques. The theme for Illustration Friday was buzz and anyone who knows my work knows I have included a reference to whipper snippers in a past installation - I HATE THEM! So I quickly got the idea to do a Noel MeKenna-esque painting of a whipper snipper in suburbia. I have to say that this was the most fun I've had all month. I had planned to work in acrylics, but was scared off by my total lack of experience with this type of project, so I opted for aquarelles. From a distance I am actually reasonably happy with the result, despite my obvious compositional goof - just don't examine the surface too closely, please!

I also experimented with two ideas I've had for a while. One is using tissue paper to sculpt close-ups of the body, inspired somewhat by Brent Harris - this is harder than it looks, and this one is not really working, but I will experiment further. The second idea shows lots of potential and I am really excited about it. I used Japanese paper dipped in wax to construct a box. I'm really happy with the translucency and am thinking this may be a way for me to work in 3-D other than with clay.

I also managed to complete my "start" for the Library project on Flickr and finished off with a photoshopped work for Artwords, seen in the previous post "graffitti". Okay I know that photoshop is not paint, but it is 2-D and for this one I did experiment with something I've not done before, as you'll see if you check out the post.

Week 3

All right, now we are in the home straight! Week 3.

This week I became almost totally wrapped up in the Library project. I started work on the start that Alex Itin from Brooklyn had sent me. I have to admit that it's been sitting here for 2 weeks and I've been looking at it, coming up with ideas, but terrified of actually making a mark. After all, this is another artist's work I'm about to work on. Eventually I bit the bullet and was able to find some images that I thought suited perfectly, including this map of the world from 1581 in the shape of a flower! (Alex's start included a butterfly with the words "Korea, China, Vietnam, Japan" on its wings.) You can see the completed collaboration on Alex's blog. I also polished off a book page Alex had included, a la the Humument.

By this stage I was really rolling on the collages and dieing to incorporate some of my anatomy imagery. I started a new book cover with the intention of posting it to the Library for collaboration, but was having so much fun that I ended up just continuing on with it myself!

I finished last week with a failed experiment. I had this idea to try a Jonathon Talbot transfer onto Japanese lace paper. Technically, it did work, but the effect is not what I had hoped. Not sure now what I hoped! Well, yes I am. I'm looking to express impermanence, but not in an old moth-eaten document kind-of-way, like this. I'm interested in change, transition. Hence the butterflies, life-cycles and so on. I think the faded effect of the transfer says more about this.

Well that brings us up to date. I am hoping the remaining 7 days will be just as productive. I think I should try to use this last week to experiment some more - then next month I can start to develop some of these ideas. I have booked my first trip to Melbourne to see my supervisor, Kevin White, in March. By then I need to have some solid progress to share.