And this one is for dear Wifek of Tunisia (an artist in her own right). I complained -- I was rather grumpy -- that all I could think of was yet another piece of allegorical suffering, and she sort of thought that I should try anyway to capture this feeling of being Nailed Down and getting Nowhere. I'm not entirely happy about art for therapy, I'd prefer to sing happier tunes (or want to believe that I do -- not the same thing, perhaps). But I suppose that we all feel it from time to time. So, I hope you'll enjoy.
It wasn't very demanding technically. Ink on paper...
...got improved by my usual electric faux hues. Detail: Even the sun is stuck.
One could add a bit of gleam to the nails too; so why not?
Up close (original size: letter) you see the fine nib lines becoming coarse and sketchy, but as they still work I don't mind. And the hues underneath are okay, too. Perhaps the earth tones are a wee bit too stark. But so is the feeling of being nailed down.
This sketch was started more than half a year ago and got finished right now. (It's working title was Job Application Fatigue, for reasons irrelevant now.) After the colourful thing last week, I used it to make something in a lower key. I kept the lines and the background, already in my favourite sepia...
...and with a few alterations, such as more bubbles and another arm, I added a little mottling electric pastel -- creating, I hope, a dampened but not entirely lifeless palette.
-- Do you know why the arms are eagerly rising from the boxes, perhaps with some kind of lofty credentials in hand? And why are there hints of slugs crawling about? (Are they slugs?) What happens if one cynical hand makes a bubble burst? If you know that... then you know more than I do.
I'm a little ambivalent concerning the colours of the finished result (as for the motif, please see the previous week). I find the scale a little garish, a little Crayola Naïf, and can't decide whether its cheerfulness contrasts or actually goes quite well with the motif:
At some point (I think I've said this before, but this being post #180 or so of Paintstakingly...) one has to let go and let the work live its own life. The question is when.
One could try to be realistic, or even photosurrealistic, which is exciting for a little while (the Internet is teeming with the loyal puppies of Maestro Dalí) but I wondered what the point would be. Did the drawings suffice? Yes. Was there any point in adding shadows in absurdum? Nope. Does everything have to look like an oil or a photo, merely to please current taste (or lack thereof)? Nope. Then, thought I, we're ready to serve the dish.
Working digitally, some of the details started as thumbnail scribbles while I saw the whole on the screen; when you zoom in you see that the pen doesn't grip on the microscopical scale. It's not entirely bad; now you have the general form and one may discover new things if the pen is interpreting the lump freely. This became a cairn of sorts -- probably because I thought of hiking and rucksacks. I wonder what it is thinking about.
This part -- I started with a tree and ended up with rectangles -- is more difficult to explain. Perhaps what I do is children's drawings for adults who have to unlearn Understanding About Everything, as adults are prone to do. (This Understanding About Everything has created a perfectly confusing world, impossible to understand.)
A final look at the Rucksack!
I can thank friend Cecilia for helping me to come up with this idea, sadly not a finished work yet. Many other things have been on the illustrator's mind; commercial works that one can't show to you, at least not yet, trying to make a somewhat neglected dinghy ready for sea, recording with the little orchestra et al. Anyhow we had this conversation on the Rucksack of Life. What we carry with us in the form of experience and feelings, from early childhood and all the way up, never truly leaves us. It's the content, some good and some bad, of an ever expanding rucksack that we have to carry all the way up.
(Somewhere, I think, it grows so large that you can't carry it yourself -- that's where you need friends and support.)
I've modelled the bag on a very popular children's rucksack, I had one and most other Swedes react to it with nostalgia. In my case it's hiking with the family in the mountains... There are large varieties for grownups too. My little trick here -- which'll hopefully look better with the landscape put in -- is to let perspective work on everything but the bags (so that they'll grow on us). As for the rest of the landscape I am slowly gaining ideas, and there is still room for plenty of surprises in it.
Here is how it started out; a sketch among others... Sketching and thinking I've always considered being the most important part of the work. This, and being a little mindless.
With a little luck I'll finish this work next week. Stay tuned.
Organists are not normal. Bravely they march into the jaws of churches they've never visited before, only to meet the Organ: a vicious, untrusty creature, with who knows how many little quirks, gained through many years -- I've heard they're individuals, all with different oddities... And here the organist comes, perhaps playing music on this creature that they've never heard before, straight from the sheet. And do it well too. A very unclassic musician can but admire.
Detail. I haven't bothered with being "realistic" at all. I find it boring. The pale, delicate hands got interesting forms, I think? -- The stops have various nonsense inscribed. Wonder how they sound.
Note that the keys go in interesting angles. (The pipes were multiplied in my Box of Wonders. Thus I could spend more time doing the first one well.)
(For Helena, who gave me the idea :-)
