Elemental books mosaic

Elemental books mosaic
Originally uploaded by steph.harmon

These are some of the altered books I'm working on for two upcoming exhibits.

Second upcoming exhibition

This is the second exhibit I'm scheduled to be in over the next couple of months. This is the final phase of a project I organized for the STAA Gallery in Alphen a/d Rijn. Nine artists worked for more than six months together and individually on one theme: vergankelijkheid (translation: transitoriness/mortality). Many of the results of the project will be exhibited at this show.

I, however, will not be there to enjoy the opening (which will feature a fado singer from Portugal, by the way!). I'll be at a "work week"/field trip with classmates from the Opleiding oudeschildertechnieken in Tuscany. I'm not complaining. Would've been nice to be able to be at my opening, though...

Upcoming exhibits

Okay, well, it's been a while since I posted here -- as my father-in-law pointed out yesterday. Here's one of the reasons why! This is a flyer for a show I'll be in next month. It's a sort of open atelier/art walk weekend. If you are in the area and want to hike/bike the artists' route, please do! I think it'll be a very nice event. Unfortunately I'm going to miss it, because that is when I'll be in Tuscany for a painting week for school.
And this is just one of three exhibits I'm scheduled to be in between now and June. So, just for the record: I do have pix of encaustic work/lessons that I still have to post, as well as at least 4 weeks' worth of oil painting work/lessons. But first I need to get some more objects finished for my two upcoming shows (I'm making artists' books, not paintings, for these exhibits). I'll post the invite to the second show (called Vergankelijkheid) in the next coming days or so.

Baking paintings

I just read the press release for an upcoming show in May at Boijmans about master forger Han van Meegeren's "Vermeers". I'm not much interested in art forgery (or Vermeer's technique, for that matter). One thing jumped out at me, however: Van Meegeren used a thermosetting phenol-formaldehyde resin in his work. That's what Bakelite is, too -- interesting.

Here's a description of his materials from Wikipedia:

"Van Meegeren bought authentic 17th century canvas and mixed his own paints from raw materials (such as lapis lazuli, white lead, indigo, and cinnabar) using old formulas to ensure that they were authentic. In addition, he used badger-hair paintbrushes, similar to those Vermeer was known to have used. He came up with a scheme of using phenol formaldehyde to cause the paints to harden after application, making the paintings appear as if they were 300 years old. After completing a painting, Van Meegeren would bake it at 100 °C (212.0 °F) to 120 °C (248.0 °F) to harden the paint, and then roll it over a cylinder to increase the cracks. Later, he would wash the painting in black India ink to fill in the cracks."

Now that's a creative mix of new and old materials and techniques, huh? I'm a fairly inventive baking painter (or painting baker), but not I'm sure I'd ever have thought of baking my paintings!

Here are some links for further reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_van_Meegeren (English)
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_van_Meegeren (Dutch)
http://boijmans.m9.mailplus.nl/nct4321365/267FDCnHHdpVXjj (Dutch)
http://www.boijmans.nl/nl/7/kalender/calendaritem/321 (Dutch)

Working with wax

Yesterday I gave a paper/presentation on (bees)wax in art, primarily focusing on encaustic painting. I promised my classmates I'd put a few links to some videos on encaustic techniques here (see below).

There are eight videos at this youtube channel that are about encaustic painting: http://www.youtube.com/user/FineArtStore#p/c/A5B0DB55743E1DE1, one of these is a general introduction to a basic set-up for encaustics: http://www.youtube.com/user/FineArtStore#p/c/A5B0DB55743E1DE1/0/yHt-x0yIVXg

There's also a demo on R&F Paints here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LU_u4IFCSw&feature=related

Finally, my favorite of all is this video of artist Laura Moriarty working with wax here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QY4WWH4t1ac

Snow day

Unfortunately I had to miss a day of class today. I woke up around 6 and got up and got ready without looking outside. Once I did, I saw a whole new layer of snow had fallen overnight. So after checking the news and weather report, I decided it would be safer to stay home.

It's a bummer, because I'd been looking forward to giving my presentation on WAX! Yes, wax and art. Good stuff. I was supposed to give my presentation last week, but Luuk scheduled an excursion for us on that day. I hope that there will be time for it next week, I'm actually looking forward to sharing what I have found.

It's still snowing out there, has been almost all day. What a winter this has been so far! I am glad it's not been quite as intense as at my bro's place, though (he lives near Washington, D.C.!).

Excursion

Pictures from our excursion to the SRAL:

Slideshow and lecture at the SRAL

Restoration in progress, tempera painting

Great detailed wing, tempera panel being restored

Oil painting, possibly up for restoration

Annemie and the backside of a panel

Warped panel being restored

Madder root

Some of the fabulous sources of pigments (red bole in the foreground, mmm!)

This is Anita's second cousin. He's fixing up the "long Lord" on the table next to him.

Some gilding techniques and madder root

Table full of pigment sources

Azurite

Orpiment (if I remember correctly)

And...Luuk brought delicious taartjes. Yeay, thanks Luuk!

Time for taartjes!

Good resources

I've found an interesting website/shop called Natural Pigments that seems to be pretty useful.
I especially like their pigment info and their tools.
I've also stumbled across an online version of Thompson's The Practice of Tempera Painting. Handy.

Thesis thoughts

Been wrestling with what to write my essay on (it's a pleasant tussle so far, no worries there...). Alchemy is a vast ocean of a subject, and I like swimming in it but soon I'll need to start narrowing my focus so I can crank out a ten-page essay before the end of March. The essay is supposed to concentrate on material/technical aspects of whatever subject we choose. So right now I'm leaning towards working with the doctrine of signatures, or perhaps the element of fire, and how these were applied by artists and alchemists in 16th- and 17th-century Europe. Or maybe hylomorphism. Aww, see...there's just so much to work with!

Black is the new black?

A Belgian artist [Frederik De Wilde] has collaborated with Rice University to make a black 144 times darker than what we now know as black. Hmm. Here are links in Dutch and English relating to this news; there was something going on at Rice around this earlier, too: see this NPR story from 2008.

Alchemy

I'm doing the research for my writing project. The subject I've chosen is alchemy (surprise!). So far I've found some *very* interesting sources, including Gage's Colour and Culture, Bucklow's The Alchemy of Paint (my fave so far) and Elkins' What Painting Is. Funny, I ran into the last title nearly simultaneously with both my partner and Luuk, who's generously loaned me the copy he just picked up in the UK during winter break.

If anyone has any other suggestions for good reading on this subject, I'd love to hear them!

Tempera V: bont & blauw & borrellen ... (or, in other words: fur & blue & cocktails)

Well alrighty then, school's started up again. So this week's lesson was about painting...fur. We're still working with egg tempera. We had a variety of fake fur bits and the manky-looking stuffed squirrel that I've decided to name Hieronymus. A couple of my classmates used him as their model, and I just adore their excellent renderings of his...specialness. Here's a picture of him:

(he is rather cute, in a special way, I think!!!)

It was time to stock up our supplies of pigment dispersions (pastes), so several kind classmates made up some new batches -- the ultramarine was so pretty in the bright January sun, I had to take a picture of it.

After hours of focusing on fur, we let things get a bit blurry at our New Year's cocktail party. Long live the sprezzatura!

Finally, one of my classmates asked that I post all of our studies online, so here they are, with a couple of shots of the fur models/samples in between it all as well...

Winter break

Hurrah, no school for a couple of weeks! In the meantime, I'm enjoying the snow we still have, even as it's melting...

Tempera IV - working with a live model

This is the first time I've ever painted a live model with tempera, and the method we're using has about half a dozen steps, in two phases. Complex! Here are some photos of our work in progress.

Hester working on her underpainting

My underpainting

My tablemate Els' work, next to mine

Brieke at the easel

Luuk demonstrating the 'final touches' on Annemie's painting

Tempera, part III - alla prima

In this lesson we worked on generating a couple of spheres (one with and one without white added) using a technique in which the paint was worked around a bit while still wet. I had pretty good success with this and enjoyed experimenting with it. After that we started learning how to represent skin using our own hands as a subject.

Anita working on her hand

My alla prima spheres (still wet) and my COFFEE (the brown motor, mmmmm)

Two nice little spheres (left no white, right using white) and an underpainting of my hand

Step two, applying the protoplasmos on my hand sketch

Steven showing us...his nice apron? :-)

Tempera, part II - folds in fabrics

We're working out several kinds of "classic" exercises lately. These photos below were from our work on studies of folds in fabrics (red velvet, in this case) and they range from mixing the pigments up to a couple of finished versions by my classmates.

This is my favorite red: toluidine red. It doesn't play well with water (above) but once it starts to get along, it begins to manifest a golden sheen -- like alchemical magic (below).

Cochineal -- first a pale pink but, after Hester added water, it became a fiery red!

The folds in the velvet cloth from my angle

Anita's work

Brieke at work

My work (yes, it did look like a pile of brains at that point!)

Final finished products by Hester and Annemie