Tag Archives: sun

Inner Sun

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I’m REALLY excited about this newest painting.  The making of this painting was very new to me… Using the Sketchbook app on iPad, I was able to take the level of design on this to a much higher level.  Not only am I thrilled with the experience and finished product of this painting, but I can see all sorts of possibilities for future work.  Which is invigorating.

“Maria (Inner Sun)” is 20″ x 60,” in acrylic paint, gold leaf, and glass beads (the liquitex medium)

BEFORE PAINTING:
I photographed this subject, Maria, almost a year ago.  She is actually doing zumba outdoors, but I cropped her body out of it.  Maria has an amazing personal story, and clearly, a beautiful smile.  In the complete photograph, Maria’s arms are outstretched, and the worm’s eye view shows the bright blue sky over her head.  Her body language, the smile on her face, her outstretched arms, and the vastness of the sky create an overwhelming feeling of freedom, openness, and connectedness with this great big world.  To translate this feeling into her painting was challenging… (which is why it has been so long since I photographed her!)  I fussed with this composition for a long time and scrapped a lot of ideas before I finally came up with the right imagery for her.

I created the design around Maria using the Sketchbook app.  I was able to draw freehand using a stylus, but as I drew, the app created a mirror image of every single element – perfect bilateral symmetry.  And then I was also able to reflect the bottom and top half of the image using the layering options.  This might be total child’s play compared to Photoshop, but I love that I am still drawing while using it.  I was able to edit the crap out of the design with relative ease.

PROCESS:
Basically I taped off the canvas and painted the shades of blue, the white and yellow beams, first.  Then I projected the design on top, and drew it on with white charcoal so I wouldn’t get pencil marks in the paint.  Then I painted the design in gold, then glued the gold leaf on top of that.  I painted Maria after I had finished the whole design.  The top of the painting – the pink/red… is covered in glass beads and comes off of the canvas about a 1/4.”  There was a lot of tedious fixing of edges and patching of gold leaf. Overall I spent a lot of time drafting this image and designing it, and actually making the painting was a super efficient process as a result.

Now the coolest thing about this painting, is that as I worked, the design got more and more and more complex.  I reversed positive and negative areas, I wove the white line through the gold leafed shapes…  I am just so excited about this experience, this whole new way of making art.  I would never dream of doing anything like this with pencil and paper.  Hoorayyyy technology!

I always worry about how to move forward, to get better, to challenge myself…  and I think that this emphasis on designs is where it’s at.  It is such a neat thing, to try to communicate meaning in these flat forms.  To make it all feel like something.  To draw it by hand.  It is like speaking a new language.  Suddenly I saw it everywhere – rugs, people’s clothes (I was particularly inspired by Jennifer Lopez’s dress at the Oscars?), my shower curtain…

The straight lines and geometric shapes on one layer, with organic lines curling over them in gold…It is this conversation between hard and soft, masculine and feminine.  They are separate elements, but they communicate with each other and effect each other.  Clearly I’m obsessed with all this.  And that’s the dragon that I am chasing when searching for inspiration… I can’t just be interested in it, I need to be obsessed.

SYMBOLISM:
The symbolism in this painting is not quite as straightforward as what I often do.  I have an enormous painting that I want to do next that is going to be exploding with pretty literal symbolic imagery (plus a whole bunch of organic and geometric designs).  But that’s later.

For now, look through the gallery for pictures of process and completed painting.  I have an excessive amount of pictures because it looks so cool from different angles.  The different shades of blue didn’t show up much in the final photographs for some reason… but it’s visible in other pictures.

The Evolution of Dina

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Image

This is the largest painting I have completed to date (the third painting of the “An-Noor” series). It is six feet tall and four feet wide. I learned a lot through the process. In my sketches, I left a number of details unplanned (how exactly to deal with the negative space in the background, what is she sitting on?, what is that book in her lap?)… which would have been fine, except that it takes a lot of time (and paint) to try to figure these details out on the canvas. It took me three months to paint, and repaint, and repaint, this portrait.

If you scroll through the gallery, it is clear that I started out thinking that the painting would have a red background. This painting almost broke me in two. I remember looking at the layers of red in the around the sun and finally allowing myself to admit, “It’s beautiful, but it’s not right.” And I knew for sure that I had to paint over all those hours of work, that I had to redo the mess that I had made of the gold leaf. I may or may not have cried. Of course, immediately after doing so, I wondered if I was making a huge mistake. But it wasn’t a mistake. I had to trust my instincts, and push through it, and I love the final image. She is life-size-ish, and the gold leaf (my first time using this material) is f@*king brilliant. When I photographed it, it reflected the sunlight so strongly it hurt my eyes.

Dina is posed as Norman Rockwell’s Rosie the Riveter. I don’t want to go into great detail describing the imagery/symbolism in the spine of the book, or the sunflower… because I feel that it comes across? I would encourage you, however, to look closely at the spine of the book for some symbols of this woman and her power. Dina is a wonderful and inspiring woman. She grew up in North Carolina, and identifies with both her Southern and Egyptian roots. Who says collared greens and grape leaves don’t belong on the same plate? ❤

She will be hanging at the Carrack Modern Art this weekend for their last community show of 2012! Reception is this Friday.

Here is a gallery of pictures that shows the process (most are cellphone pics).