Ink of Mask

"...nest, crysalis and garment only constitute one moment of a dwelling place..." Gaston Bachelard, 'the poetics of space,' (Beacon, 1966), p.66.

"Ink of Mask," 6" x 6.5", 15.2cm x 16.5cm, India ink, graphite, pen ink, Faber-Castelli watercolour pencils on archival paper, 2010. Photoshop 'flourescent filter' added to photo of a simple doodle sketch to pass the time.

Just a scribble, though it is based on a beautiful photograph somewhere on Facebook (FB's numbering of photos, removing all references to an individual's site does not help one to re-find an image), the original far superior to this ditty, done while my video was rendering.

Later: I purchased some new watercolour pencils today, having misplaced ours when we moved into our apartment 3 1/2 years ago. The image below is the original.


      

                                          

Clips

Working on a video of a talk (that I videotaped in 2004 for a conference), and need to add some visual interest to it. Found some old exposed film, scratched on some of it, scanned, and then laboriously added images of my paintings, drawings, photos, feathering the edges, one at a time as I found them scattered amidst my computer files. It's on a transparent background, which I hope Final Cut Express picks up on even if Blogspot didn't. And I do hope scrolling these interesting framing of images slowly in the video will hold the viewer's attention through the 18 minutes of the talk. This little bit has taken hours to do. The rest of the images will take at least a week to prepare. Click for a larger version.

A few hours later: the .jpg had a white background, so I opened the .psd file. All the layers were there! I saved them all as a 'freeze frame' and added that as a track in my video. It is unbelievable, but the background is, indeed, transparent.

Here's a QT still, not as good as Apple's Grab application, but I seem to have inadvertently deleted the latter.

You can see I am treating the video frame like a canvas - the coloration, the different layers. When I've finished the video, I will show 'before' and 'after' photos, promise.


                                          

Tea Ceremony

Tea Ceremony, 2010, 9"x9.5", 23cm x 24cm, india ink, pencils, oils, beeswax.

I came back to this little drawing -a year later turning it into a little painting. Rubbed out some of the green pencil, brushed melted beeswax over it, a little sepia oil colour, wrote into it. I should have left it at this point.

Tea Ceremony

The grace in living,
teapot, tea leaves, steeping.
She bends to pour.

When the waters
washed away the homes.
Clotted blood
of his wounds.
Petals floating on dirges.

Yet laughter of lovers,
her heart of memory.
Landscapes of green
move through us.

Comfort of the gentle
and exact tea ceremony.
Love is everything
the great artist sings.

(c)Brenda Clews, 2009.



Tea Ceremony, 2010, 9"x9.5", 23cm x 24cm, india ink, pencils, oils, beeswax.

This is where I left it after many hours of working. It's glued (with a natural, non-toxic glue) onto another sheet and the writing is scratched through. It spent the night being flattened under many books before this scan.

(Click on images for larger size.)



Slideshow of process from sketch to finished.