At the Light Table 009

The painted four-foot wide scene both completed (at left, before trimming) and installed on the lawn (above) thanks to my neighbour Duane and his son, Lowell. Installed on the last Sunday of Advent.

Duane also helped to create a set of small Christmas tree ornaments based on this design that I sold at our parish of St. Patrick's. The funds raised will support the Sisters of St. Anne's school reconstruction efforts in Haiti.

The Muse

Michael Ostroff's recent release, Winds Of Heaven: Emily Carr, Carvers and The Spirits of The Forest, isn't (in my opinion) a stellar film. Sorry. This filmed biography of the British Columbian visual artist caused me to wince at times with its jarring mix of colour film grains and typography that is all over the map both historically and aesthetically. However, the story of Emily's life is strong enough to overcome the film's technical and aesthetic short-comings.

Historical footage of Victoria and the West Coast combined with images of Emily's painted interpretations of these vistas gave context to the arc of her life's work. And to learn that for 15 years she refused to paint stirred in me a great sense of empathy and kinship.

Carr House on Government Street

Almost every creative spirit has a muse it seems. However, classical Greek and neoclassical thought do not really describe or depict a Muse for the visual arts. For me, Emily takes her place with the nine daughters of Mnemosyne as the tenth Muse, and her domain is the visual arts.

As offsping of Mnemosyne, goddess of memory, the Muses were meant to encourage in artists the collective memories of their people through dance, poetry and song. However, the visual arts—though unrepresented—has proven to be one of the strongest and longest lasting creative disciplines to retain the historical memory of their creators' time.

The Elephant, Emily's traveling studio

Since my time at the University of Regina studying Canadian Art History, forward to further education at Emily Carr College in Vancouver, and then to live in Victoria both around the corner from Emily's House of Allsorts and then a block away from her final resting place in Ross Bay, I have felt her gently divining a path for me, both in art and in life.  I sense from the number of pencils, paint brushes and flowers that adorn her grave marker many others do as well.

Emily's resting place in Ross Bay

As Catullus says in Carmina I:

"And so, have them for yourself,
whatever kind of book it is,

and whatever sort, oh patron Muse

let it last for more than one generation,
eternally."

View Emily's Neighbourhood in a larger map

At the Light Table 008

Image now adjusted to use the paint pots.

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Used the Pantone chart and found there is quite an interesting variety of old house paint pots in the studio. These should all work nicely on the new creche under a thick, black enamel illustration.

At the Light Table 006

 

The old "U-Bild" No. 7 Nativity Scene is tired and in need of a face-lift. It's usually a half-day event to assemble with much heavy-lifting and consultation regarding placement of figures and lighting. This year, considered creating a faux stained glass painted on Plexiglas, but tests prove the daytime display is quite dull. Decided instead to create a single panel that's more like a large orthodox icon than a creche. Would like to flank it with angels at some point. However, the central panel should be painted by advent -- angels will be a bonus.

The rough mock-up for the central panel is based on French mediaeval windows and early English manuscripts.









Reviewing the mock-up with Mickey Jay, it seems a bit trite to rely so heavily on the stained glass motif. To offset this and give the piece a more contemporary feel, I looked to House Industries' great CPG graphics. The loose colour application with bold black over-print are great. Plus I just love their illustrative style.

Still a bit like stained glass, so have to refine the mock-up further. The line work in progress. Need something seriously bold that can hold its own over the vibrant colour.

Snow Day 010

Drawing and re-drawing is something I don't do enough of. Now I'm forcing myself to reconfigure Samantha so that I can get to a place where re-drawing her with consistency is easy to achieve. Plus a couple of the previous iterations were a bit "odd."

Snow Day 009

Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics describes the visual vocabulary of comics in-depth, placing many historical heavy-weights within three vertices (what McCloud describes as "The Big Triangle"): the picture plane; reality and language. I'm working on Samantha's face basing it on Auntie Gert and definitely over-thinking it based on McCloud's observations.

Snow Day 008

Looking at Hank Ketcham characters, they're so identifiable and distinctive I can't help but draw on them for Snow Day. The bell-bottom legs and simple construction is really endearing. Have to work on the facial features a bit more and perhaps (at the risk of making Samantha look like Ketcham's Margaret) it's worth adding the ringlets that Auntie Gert grew up with illustrated below.

Some of my Grandma's old family photos have great personality, especially those that include my Auntie Gert. She's beside my Grandma second from left on the top step -- a real character. Dig the ringlets, they're great.

Sketching 104

At any one time, I've got five sketchbooks on the go -- at least! They turn up in the funniest places. Here are a couple of real oldies of my love and the kids from an old Strathmore 14x17 sketchbook I found behind a book shelf.

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Thanks to Blurb I was able to have Grandma's Memoirs published in time for my Mom's 75th birthday. She was tickled.

Evelyn Lawson by Evelyn Lawson | Make Your Own Book

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New City of Victoria bike shelter decal on Government Street. The design is based on one of the street banners I designed in 2003 for Mike Hill, the city's Downtown Community Development Coordinator. AlleyKat Signs fabricated using 3M Fasara. Looks good!

Broadside

Sketching's been far from my mind lately, but creating has not. However, the creations could soon get ugly, especially when I see some a*hole fail to yield the right-of-way and instead run broadside into the people I love. Margo, my daughter, was recently broadsided by a motorist in a crosswalk, of all places. Mom has been broadsided by Amyloid beta which nature.com says has a physiological role in modulating synaptic activity, the disruption of which probably underlies cognitive dysfunction. Shiva runs broadside into our lives and doesn't give a shit about rights-of-way.

The Creative Habit 002

The audience applauded at the finish of Exit Through the Gift Shop showing at Uvic's Cinecenta theatre. Mickey J joined me. On the drive home through Uplands, he and I debated whether the interviews with Banksy throughout the film are staged. Regardless, there's no debating Banksy is the ultimate guerilla marketing genius.

The Creative Habit 001

A book recommended to me as one of the better business books ever written is Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit: Learn it and use it for life. So far a very revealing read in-between World Cup soccer matches and fence building — all of those tasks that wheedle their way into life and replace opportunities to create artwork.
The revelation is something I already know — rather than rely on bursts of intermittent inspiration a disciplined, habitual approach to creation produces consistent and high quality results. However, Tharp recognizes how difficult it can be to maintain a rigorous and disciplined lifestyle and encourages the inclusion of small and comforting habits amongst the larger moments of discipline to act as triggers that encourage one's mind to switch on creation.

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For their 100th Anniversary in 2011, BC Parks is bantering about the return of their mascot, "Jerry the Moose." To support this, I've been working on a few new poses of Jerry, like this one at left, sketching in pencil first, scanning and then tracing the scan in Adobe Illustrator with the Wacom tablet using Illustrator's pressure sensitive calligraphic brush to get the clean inked line. So far the poses have been well received.
© Her Majesty, of course.

Sketching 103

Andrew taking up position at the lunchroom table with his Vancouver Sun.

Sketching 102

Mickey J rendered with a new "Derwent Sketching Dark Wash" pencil and Holbein Water Brush from Opus Art Supplies. Very cool tools.

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At left is a personal project that began over a decade ago. My grandmother, Evelyn Lawson, whose memoirs this small book holds, was a remarkable woman. In this small book, she recounts some of the events of her life growing up in rural Saskatchewan at the beginning of the last century, her marriage to my grandfather, her family's move to Winnipeg during the depression to find employment and how there she made her life.

This project has been sitting on the back-burner since my mother handed it to me shortly after the turn of the millennium. As with many projects, there's always something more important that needs doing! However, with my grandmother now gone and my own mother's seventy-fifth birthday coming up soon, no excuse was strong enough that I couldn't complete this project and have it printed as a gift to Mom.

At the Light Table 002

One of the mantras of my current UVic Marketing course is consumers do not buy products, they buy benefits. However, what are the benefits of the fine and applied creative arts? That is, any product of the creative process -- be it a song, a painting, a comic book,  good graphic design, a film, a play or a dance performance.

The process of creation can bring great joy to the producer, but what about the audience? How do they benefit by purchasing the creative product?

I'm not sure if ego satisfaction is the only benefit to purchasing a creative work. Bragging rights to ownership of prestige offerings extend across all products -- computers, cars, coffee and the list goes on. Not all creative works fit into the "prestige" offering category to satisfy one's ego.

"Feeling" is closer, perhaps, but it's a vague benefit for me. The Gulag Archipelago doesn't make me feel good, but it's a good book. Why?

"What's in it for me?" is getting very close. What a great question to ask!

Boy, I've been thinking about this -- a lot. At the risk of answering my own question, I wonder if audiences are really purchasing the benefits of escape and insight when they purchase creative offerings.

Think about James Cameron's Avatar -- it's an escape -- 3 hours in which one doesn't have to sort the recycling. Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker is insight -- wow, is that what's going on over there.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's character, Sherlock Holmes, says towards the end of Doyle's The Red-Headed League, “My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence. These little problems help me to do so.” Perhaps all the arts are an escape from the commonplaces of life while providing an insight into the commonplaces of life.

Our instructor, Ken Bodnarchuk, pointed the class towards to great online resource:
http://www.entrepreneur.com/marketing/marketingbasics/article34942.htm

As always, comments are welcome. 

Snow Day 007

Henry Miller was 43 when Tropic of Cancer was published. It's listed as one of Time Magazine's ALL-TIME 100 Novels. I'm sure it's on several other "top" lists as well. There's hope for me yet. I am wondering about including Emily Carr in this short story, Snow Day. If I set the story in 1910, then Ms. Carr will be 39. I almost wish to include her as a child rather than an adult, but the Empress Hotel wasn't built until 1905. Ms. Carr would already be 34. Perhaps it's in the cards that she's the matriarch I know her as from school and her resting place in Ross Bay, H 85 E 15.

Infrastructure 20100221

Rough for the communication / language blanket. Central to the work is the human ear and the telephone keypad with the alphabet on the keys. Secondary are the stitched sound waves as sound is not the only way to communicate thought. Perhaps a bit too David Salle pastiche, ha ha ha. However, mingling stitching with silk-screening, patchwork and painting may be a great approach to layering imagery in this and other blankets.
As well, pocket this piece of trivia: David Salle is almost exactly ten years my senior.

Sketching 101

My son, Mickey J Sinatra, gave me a mini Moleskine as a present for Christmas. Let's put it to use! Here's fellow designer, Bob Fehr, spending part of his birthday working at an online graphic for the provincial website.