super productivity mode

This is kind of how I am now, in a super productive mode…I’m rushing to finish all of my current projects : an interactive flash website with lots of stop motion animations, a complex robotic sculpture, which will play metal drums and junk, a series of paintings and some wheatpasting stuff, and an edition of my mezzotint plate – which I will try do to today. So my days looks a lot like : wake up, take the bus, assist to courses, take the bus again and go home to work on projects till I cannot stay awake anymore, repeat the process…

Its a lot of fun and really motivating to work on such a big bunch of projects all at the same time, it really helps keep the creativity and inspiration at its top.

This is why I just don’t have time to post any of these works (which aren’t finished anyway) for now, so it’s normal if the blog is kind of dead these days but it will overflow of new stuff pretty soon, just keep watching…

little drawing

I made this little drawing last night, while eating the the Kafein cafe in Montreal. The inspiration behind the little piece is ofcourse the art of Jason d’Aquino, who is drawing insanely detailed stuff on vintage paper and even on matchbooks.

http://www.jasondaquino.com/

 

-graphite and color pencils on vintage science dictionnary library card

Also, I found a stockpile of vintage paper while doing a cleaning job at my university yesterday, about a hundred sheets of various sizes, dating from the 70’s, I found the library card there too…and I also took the card in the electric box that was left open…it was so vintage looking I could not resist!

Paintings

Remember the paintings that I talked about in some posts recently? I finally took some photos…

So, the project that started with the first portrait – the girl with green hair falls – painted this summer, grew up and inspired me something bigger. A collection of paintings, linked together conceptually and graphically aroud the main concept of the symbolism of resistance . Symbolism, from tattoo symbolsim or cryptic alchemic symbols, to bilaterral alphabet inscriptions. This symbolism serving a resistance against mainstream, mass media and traditionnal thinking in general. Prefering to these, counterculture, political activism (mostly anarchism) and self-expression. Also, another point brough in the portraits is the opposition of hermetic symbolism and sensuality of the body, which are often superposed in my images.

This project elaborated itself as I painted new works and looked for similarities in the content and in the form of these paintings. I would really love to see this series becoming a complete exposition and I’m currently working toward this goal…

So here’s the photos :

 

 

 

 

 

etching process

here is the first proof that was printed from my copper etching. It was wipped in a pretty unclean manner but it was to see the state of the plate. and also it gave some indication of what kind of white I can have.

mezzotint is a rather long process and only the preparation of the copper plate (the matrix) can take several hours. Actually I began to rock the white part of the plate and added some more details in there.

 

 

printmaking

I never mentionned it on this blog but I am studying in visual arts at the university right now. It is explaining my lack of activity and free time for prop making actually. But, in counterpart, there is great things about studying arts, like having access to an incredible engraving studio. So actually-almost as I write this with my ink-stained hands-I’m working on a copper plate with a technique called mezzotint, which produces extremely detailed and smooth prints. Here is a really nice site explaining the process of mezzotint : http://jimhubbman.calkinsc.com/mezzotint/mezzotint.htm

So, if you are lucky (and also if I’ not too lazy) you will be able to see some proofs that I’m printing now in the days to come. I didn’t started the final edition because there is still some work to do on the plate but it is close to completion.

the other main project that is keeping me really busy these days is a series of paintings, more specifically three portraits that I’m really proud of. They are quite small but I tried to work out the most detail I could on the images. I’m also planning to frame them in some custom-made wooden frames. Some photos of that might pop up here too someday.

and like you can see, I’m taking the liberty of expanding the scope of my blog to my entire range of projects not only those who are mythos or steampunk oriented. I thought that it might be interesting to share these with you here as I don’t showcase them anywhere else and because I’m becoming to really appreciate the blog medium for this kind of things.