My thoughts on the craft, the process and the subjects
“The Baby Bunny also came to visit the Baby Dinosaur. The Bunny and the Baby Squirrel waited patiently until Ella woke up and showed her the presents they brought: the carrot and the flower.
The friends wanted to play with Ella, but she had to remind them that she was only one-day-old and although she could was exceptionally smart and could speak perfectly well, she was still not sure if she could walk.”
My four-year-old daughter is also a fan of Totoro, and her make-believe games also prominently feature friends and neighbours of whoever she pretends to be at the moment.
Here is the latest episode of the Girl and the Egg story that I have been sketching out based on my daughter’s play.
“The Girl’s neighbour, the Baby Squirrel, came to visit and asked if he could play with the newborn Dinosaur Ella. The Baby Squirrel brought some flowers as a gift. The Girl put them in a glass with water.
Baby Ella was sleeping at the time. One-day-old babies sleep a lot, as the Girl and her friend Squirrel found out.”
“Mommy and Daddy Dinosaurs were very grateful to the Girl for taking care of the Egg and protecting it from the Cat. They were delighted to see their Baby Dinosaur. After much thinking about different names, they named her Ella.”
My daughter is taking a progressively more active role in our collaborative making of the story of the Girl and the Egg. She specifies the colors of the characters and asks every day whether I have sketched the next panel.
Here is the long-awaited hatching episode of our story:
“When the shell finally cracked open, it was not a chick, who peered from it, but a curious, purple-coloured, Baby Dinosaur with blue spots. The Girl was delighted and danced her happiest dance, which she learned just the day before.”
Fluorescent painting is a relatively new medium that is rapidly gaining popularity. With it, artists no longer have to rely on reflected fight, but can augment the viewer’s experience by using UV-activated fluorescence of certain pigments. By itself, the effect is not new: after all, we are all familiar with electro-luminescence of computer screen. But as I found out after visiting an exhibit of a local artist a couple of weeks ago, seeing a fluorescent canvas up close is different from viewing picture on an LED screen. Below is a blog post that I wrote for The Black Light Magazine after the show.
It is not surprising that Jack’s rendering of computer-generated worlds involves substantial amount of calculations. After all, it is the pattern of computational precision that we, as viewers, recognize in his wireframe landscapes. What I found most interesting, though, is the subtle contrast between the “digital” nature of the subjects and the “analog” painting technique, which becomes apparent upon close examination of Jack’s canvases. Tiny imperfections of the canvas fibers affect how the paint glows under ultraviolet (UV) light, and this texture adds a unique and interesting dimension to the paintings.
At the exhibit that we attended a couple of weeks ago, the paintings were lit by relatively broad-band LED lights, which shed a significant amount of visible (blue) light on the paintings, in addition to UV light, which is essential for activating the fluorescent paint and creating the glow-in-the-dark effect. Having some visible light was helpful not only for navigating the otherwise dark gallery, but also for highlighting the texture and making the experience of the paintings more interactive and immediate than viewing a computer-generated image would. In other words, while the computer-like precision was the unifying theme, it is the strategic lack of perfection, both in the media and the lighting, that added the human touch to the paintings.
“One day, the Girl noticed that the Egg started shaking. Then, tiny cracks appeared on its surface. The Girl held her breath in anticipation.”
Here is today’s episode.
“The Girl was always there to protect the Egg. The Cat had to retreat, leaving the Egg alone.”
My daughter’s make-believe stories often involve a nemesis, in the form of a mischievous cat, from which the main character, played by herself, needs to be protected. So here is the continuation of the illustrated story of the Girl and the Egg.
“It was not an easy job – taking care of the Egg. It had to be kept warm. Not too hot and not too cool, but just right. Bit most importantly, the Girl had to watch out for the Cat, who was always looking to steal the Egg when the Girl was not watching.”
I thought that it would be a pity not to capture the development of my daughter’s make-believe games, so I decided to add a bit of focus to my short motorcycle rides by sketching some of the episodes as I drink my cappuccino. So today the story starts, as my bike is parked in view of Mt. Baker, on a fantastic sunny afternoon at the Oak Bay Marina cafe.
“Once there was a Girl, and on a particularly sunny day, she had a very important job: to take care of a great white Egg. The Egg was smooth and shiny, and the Girl didn’t know what was inside. She could hear tiny tweeting noises coming from the egg, and she hoped that it was a chick, who would become her friend.”
Making your work public is an integral part of a creative process. The concept is simple and hardly new, but actually making it a reality is not trivial. A work of art is inherently an expression of something that the artist closely associates with, but exhibiting or performing a piece of art is an equivalent of a public statement. In this sense, publishing your work, as any form of public communication is a skill that can be developed and that requires regular practice.
There are many well-known benefits of showing our creations to other people. Artists, who regularly exhibit, share, perform or otherwise publish their work develop a sense of connection with the audience that becomes activated even at the earliest stages of the process. Publishing our work also allows us to develop an ability to receive feedback, both positive and negative, and use it in a constructive way. And of course, if you create and share something new, there is an exciting possibility to build a community around you and your art (not that being in the centre of it actually matters – often, making a contribution to an existing area is most rewarding.)
